USB BATTERY V1

found out yesterday that theres a shuffle shortage and gadget battery life can only be expected to get worse. bummer. at least you can make the most of your waiting-for-shuffle blues and solder yourself a usb battery. this little gizmo runs off a 9 volt battery and supplies your favorite little device with the proper 5 volts of mobile power. in lieu of running an ipod off of it i tested it with an mpx!!" smartphone and it should work fine with any low power mobile device that can charge via usb cable. read more for instructions on how to make your own. heres what you need to scrounge up#

5.$v zener diode. $""ohm or slightly greater resistor. all i had was a %%"ohm which works. dont try anything lower than $""ohm. 9v battery connector and 9v battery. flat female usb connector that mates with your devices usb cable. this is the hardest part to find. i tore mine off an old usb extension cable.

wire it up connect everything up as shown. a board makes it easy but in a pinch you could &ust wrap ends together. the top two wires go to the battery and the bottom two are connected to the female half of the usb cable i butchered. polarity matters on the diode so check your work.

test it connect the battery and test the voltage over the diode. it should be close to 5 volts. if not make sure you have everything wired correctly 'pay special attention to the polarity of the diode(.

try it still waiting for an ipod i decided to grab my smartphone and kick the tires on the usb battery. as you can see in the image the device thinks its plugged in. you should be able to use any low power device that charges via usb.

how it works the zener diode conducts in the reverse direction when its breakdown voltage of 5.$ volts is reached and the voltage across the diode will be that same 5.$ volts so it acts to limit our 9 volt supply down to roughly 5 volts which is what usb powers devices at. the resistor is there to keep the circuit from shorting when the load 'your shuffle( is removed. if you use a resistor less than $"" ohms youll know it because it will get hot. if you use too large a resistor you wont be able to supply enough current to your device. finish the job as you can see im pretty nasty at soldering. im under strict orders from cl to keep this tiny and pocket sized for the ipod so ive tried to cram everything as tight as possible. as soon as minneapolis warms up enough for the ipods to migrate ill be making a custom case for this.

USB BATTERY V2
thanks to everyones great feedback ive now got a usb battery thats much more efficient and capable of delivering more current to a portable device. like i promised i put together a slick little case to finish this hack off right. read on for some tips on building your own. quick impro ement as mentioned by several readers youll want to use a 5 volt regulator ic instead of the resistor)zenerdiode combo i discussed previously. youll be able to charge your device faster while it is running and its much more efficient which will give your 9 volt a longer battery life. the best part is that its easier and cheaper to do it this way. &ust grab an lm*+"5 from your local hacker store and wire it up. connect the positive battery terminal to the *+"5 input pin the positive usb pin to the *+"5 output pin and connect the negative battery terminal and the usb ground pin to the *+"5 ground pin. which is which, if you hold the *+"5 with the text facing you and the pins downward the pins from left to right are# input ground output. it looks like this#--.. for the female usb connector look down into the end of the connector so that it is oriented like so#

pin $ is the positive '5v( terminal 'which goes to the output of the *+"5( and pin / is ground 'which goes to the *+"5 ground pin(. e!siest w!y to test several people were wondering how to tell if you are going to fry your device. heres the easiest way to test when you are all done wiring# $. cut a standard usb cable in half. !. plug the male end into your usb battery. %. connect the positive and negative ends of your multimeter to the red and black usb wires respectively. /. if it reads something very close to 5v then you are wired correctly. m!kin" ! c!se usb battery case $ i chose to make my case out of polystyrene plastic. you can find this stuff in sheet form at most hobby stores. its the same kind of plastic used in your standard plastic model kit and the sheet form lends itself nicely to making flat sided ob&ects0 like a small case for a usb battery1 basically you can &ust cut the sheet to the size you want with an x-acto knife. then &ust glue them together carefully with standard issue model cement. the cement is a polystyrene solvent and it melts the connected peices of plastic together. when you are finished with the basic assembly use a sheet of /"" grit sandpaper to smooth the sides down and bevel the edges.

room with ! iew here you can see the case during construction. i want it to be small so i sized it &ust large enough to accommodate the battery and usb connector. regarding the usb connector. metal can be notoriosly hard to secure to plastic. model cement works best for styrene on styrene but ! part epoxy or super glue seem to do the best &ob for syrene on metal. try to affix the largest possible surface area. i glued small pieces of styrene to each of the / faces of the usb connector. you can then cement on more styrene to build up a larger surface area which can then be securely affixed to the front of the case.

s#i$in" $oor to close off the battery compartment i made a pretty simple sliding door. its &ust two pieces of styrene with a third smaller piece sandwiched in between. this slides on rails which were made by cementing thin strips of styrene to the case.

where to "o from here im still sithout an ipod shuffle but that about wraps it up for my usb battery. theres no reason you need to stop here though. you can make something very similar for the firewire interface for a normal ipod with two 9v batteries in series and an lm*+$! $!v regulator. you can use found ob&ects like the altoids tins for your case. if you really want to get exotic you could use something like bondo 'wear gloves( over a styrene frame to make something more custom or organic looking.