Battery Holder Reuses Blister Pack

In need of a portable power supply, [Alastair] threw some batteries into an Altoids tin. The problem was he didn’t have a holder for these size A23 cells. Inspiration struck and he realized the blister pack they came in fits them snuggly and just needs some conductors to complete the circuit. He pulled some battery contacts from a broken CD player. Using foam-based double-stick tape he added some spring to the contacts and came up with a perfectly sized holder that works wonderfully.

We’ve tried making battery packs by wrapping the entire thing in clods of duct tape. This looks like it works a lot better and there’s still room to fit the batteries and a switch inside of this minty enclosure.

33 thoughts on “Battery Holder Reuses Blister Pack

  1. I’ve done the same thing for AA’s when I didn’t have any spare connectors, I usually save the packs that Energizer rechargeables come in because they snap closed and are good for storage, but add some wires and they make good battery holders.

  2. Huh, I have a mountain of these little plastic cup thingies from battery packs. There’s AA mountain, the D-Cell cascades, and the AAA foothills.

    That plastic is evilly tough to destroy so they’d probably make great cases. I wonder if I put two back-to-back if I can make a proper enclosure?

  3. this is 1 of those things that is like so obvious yet i’ve never thought to do it
    somone submit to thereifixedit!!!
    btw, needs aluminum foil contacts for ultimate kludge-factor

  4. 23A For lighting, wrist watch tiny cells in series !!?! Is he aware of ~ 33 mAh and huge internal resistance? I just cant think of even worse choice of batteries. I have semiconductor tester that runs on 23A, it pull just couple mA when in use and its enough to create frustration of replacing them frequently, and they so overpriced, I hate them so much and add external supply in the end.

  5. This is just batteries in a tin, what is hackaday thinking, i sent them a unique way to use a cheap off the shelf device to switch on/off power plugs.
    from any where in the world, even the OS is ran on was self coded in full asm.
    But they could not even give us a email acknowledgement :( .

  6. “i sent them a unique way to use a cheap off the shelf device to switch on/off power plugs.”

    http://dex4u.com/HomeAuto.htm

    If you want HAD to post a project you need to do something interesting with a good implementation.
    You have a poor implementation of a common technique, something that will only get posted if you are lucky.

  7. Lol, I’ll put batteries in a beer bottle and see if you’ll post that. While indeed a useful device, hardly hackaday worthy:

    @Dex

    Come on man, you know everyone on earth can control their house from their cell phone from the other end of the earth. What were you thinking? I just flushed my toilet using a PDA, that’s how “common” your submission was… :-)

    @xyz

    I just looked over his project… Really? Mr. Altoids looks like a short praying to happen, making molten lithium everywhere.

  8. My guess is that using a smaller switch, it may be possible to fit 2 pairs (4 batteries), and use the switch to select the pair you want to use. :)

    With a 3 position switch, you can turn it off too, if that it’s really needed.

  9. whats he using this tin for ?

    Hackaday you need to accept more submissions like this, your site is awfully dry sometimes.. what with all this nokia push BS! virtual graffiti sucks. so does skating/boarding, alot of us dont see the light of day.

    at least put them in a basic hacks category

  10. another useful kludge used by myself and others is to swipe a piece or three of the special nickel coated conductive foam from a dead lcd panel.
    this is good enough for low drain applications and reliable with multiple uses.

    i have used this and it works well (even charged a li-ion camera cell when the original charger had sprouted legs) :)

  11. do you think this could be adapted to charge a psp? idk because i know it’s got the little power brick thing. if so, something worth looking into

    Posted at 2:23 pm on Feb 5th, 2010 by 2ro

    i cut the end off a car charger, 5 volts at like 800 ma and put the right plug for a psp
    my psp 1001 booted without a battery

    im going to try this with usb(ie, 2.5 watts total) and see if it boots
    just to charge takes less current than to run it

  12. @therian
    About the A23’s, yeah they are expensive and low amperage andsoforth BUT they are the only tiny thing that gives off 12 volts, and to get that with 1.2/1.5v batteries takes upto 10 of them and then you might as well get a motor/scooter battery since you’re lugging around several pounds anyway and it’s no longer suited for the pocket.

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