Good Lighting On A Budget With Cordless Tool Batteries

December 12, 2024 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

It’s perhaps not fair, but even if you have the best idea for a compelling video, few things will make people switch off than poor lighting. Good light and plenty of it is the order of the day when it comes to video production, and luckily there are many affordable options out there. Affordable, that is, right up to the point where you need batteries for remote shoots, in which case you’d better be ready to open the purse strings.

When [Dane Kouttron] ran into the battery problem with his video lighting setup, he fought back with these cheap and clever cordless tool battery pack adapters. His lights were designed to use Sony NP-F mount batteries, which are pretty common in the photography trade but unforgivably expensive, at least for Sony-branded packs. Having access to 20 volt DeWalt battery packs, he combined an off-the-shelf battery adapter with a 3D printed mount that slips right onto the light. Luckily, the lights have a built-in DC-DC converter that accepts up to 40 volts, so connecting the battery through a protection diode was a pretty simple exercise. The battery pack just slots right in and keeps the lights running for portable shoots.

Of course, if you don’t already have DeWalt batteries on hand, it might just be cheaper to buy the Sony batteries and be done with it. Then again, there are battery adapters for pretty much every cordless tool brand out there, so you should be able to adapt the design. We’ve also seen cross-brand battery adapters which might prove useful, too.

Sniffing Around Inside A ThinkPad Battery

December 4, 2024 by Tom Nardi 24 Comments

For most people, a battery pack that’s misbehaving simply means it’s time to get a new battery. But when the battery in their ThinkPad wasn’t able to muster up more than 20 minutes of runtime, [Shrinath Nimare] saw an opportunity to dig deeper and do a bit of investigating.

The problem seemed to be that the battery pack was reporting that it was 100% charged at just 11.7 V instead of the correct 12.3 V. As it turns out, that 11.7 V figure is only slightly above what the battery should be when its run flat — so in reality, the battery was never actually getting a charge and would report that it was dead after just a few minutes of use. But why?

With a logic analyzer attached to the pins of the battery, [Shrinath] set out to sniff its communications with the ThinkPad. Even if it wouldn’t lead to fixing the battery pack, the information obtained would potentially be useful for other projects, such as creating a custom high-capacity LiFePO4 pack down the line.

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OSHW Battery Tester Aims To Help Tame Lithium Cells

December 3, 2024 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

It’s no exaggeration to say that the development of cheap rechargeable lithium-ion batteries has changed the world. Enabling everything from smartphones to electric cars, their ability to pack an incredible amount of energy into a lightweight package has been absolutely transformative over the last several decades. But like all technologies, there are downsides to consider — specifically, the need for careful monitoring during charging and discharging.

As hardware hackers, we naturally want to harness this technology for our own purposes. But many are uncomfortable about dealing with these high-powered batteries, especially when they’ve been salvaged or come from some otherwise questionable origin. Which is precisely what the Smart Multipurpose Battery Tester from [Open Green Energy] is hoping to address.

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The Automatic Battery Charger You Never Knew You Needed

December 2, 2024 by Jenny List 47 Comments

When we saw [Max.K]’s automatic NiMh battery charger float past in the Hackaday tips line, it brought to mind a charger that might be automatic in the sense that any modern microcontroller based circuit would be; one which handles all the voltages and currents automatically. The reality is far cooler than that, a single-cell charger in which the automatic part comes in taking empty cells one by one from a hopper on its top surface and depositing them charged in a bin at the bottom.

Inside the case is a PCB with an RP2040 that controls the whole shop as well as the charger circuitry. A motorized cam with a battery shaped insert picks up a cell from the bin and moves it into the charger contacts, before dumping it into the bin when charged. What impresses us it how slick this device is, it feels like a product rather than a project, and really delivers on the promise of 3D printing. We’d want one on our bench, and after watching the video below the break, we think you will too.

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Building Experience And Circuits For Lithium Capacitors

December 2, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

For the cautious, a good piece of advice is to always wait to buy a new product until after the first model year, whether its cars or consumer electronics or any other major purchase. This gives the manufacturer a year to iron out the kinks and get everything ship shape the second time around. But not everyone is willing to wait on new tech. [Berto] has been interested in lithium capacitors, a fairly new type of super capacitor, and being unwilling to wait on support circuitry schematics to magically show up on the Internet he set about making his own.

The circuit he’s building here is a solar charger for the super capacitor. Being a fairly small device there’s not a lot of current, voltage, or energy, but these are different enough from other types of energy storage devices that it was worth taking a close look and designing something custom. An HT7533 is used for voltage regulation with a Schottky diode preventing return current to the solar cell, and a DW01 circuit is used to make sure that the capacitor doesn’t overcharge.

While the DW01 is made specifically for lithium ion batteries, [Berto] found that it was fairly suitable for this new type of capacitor as well. The capacitor itself is suited for many low-power, embedded applications where a battery might add complexity. Capacitors like this can charge much more rapidly and behave generally more linearly than their chemical cousins, and they aren’t limited to small applications either. For example, this RC plane was converted to run with super capacitors.

Swapping Batteries Has Never Looked This Cool

November 29, 2024 by Donald Papp 39 Comments

We don’t know much more than what we see with [Kounotori_DIY]’s battery loader design (video embedded below) but it just looks so cool we had to share. Watch it in action, it’ll explain itself.

Before 3D printers made it onto hobbyist workbenches, prototyping something like this would have been much more work.

[Kounotori_DIY] uses a small plastic linear guide as an interface for an 18650 battery holder and as you can see, it’s pretty slick. A little cylindrical container slides out of the assembly, allowing a spent cell to drop out. Loading a freshly charged cell consists of just popping a new one into the cylinder, then snapping it closed. The electrical connection is made by two springy metal tabs on either end that fit into guides in the cylindrical holder.

It’s just a prototype right now, and [Kounotori_DIY] admits that the assembly is still a bit big and there’s no solid retention — a good bump will pop the battery out — but we think this is onto something. We can’t help but imagine how swapping batteries in such style with a nice solid click would go very nicely on a cyberdeck build.

It’s not every day that someone tries to re-imagine a battery holder, let alone with such style. Any ideas how it could be improved? Have your own ideas about reimagining how batteries are handled? Let us know in the comments!

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Bioelectronic implants with size reference

Batteries Not Included: Navigating The Implants Of Tomorrow

November 19, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 19 Comments

Tinkerers and tech enthusiasts, brace yourselves: the frontier of biohacking has just expanded. Picture implantable medical devices that don’t need batteries—no more surgeries for replacements or bulky contraptions. Though not all new (see below), ChemistryWorld recently shed new light on these innovations. It’s as exciting as it is unnerving; we, as hackers, know too well that tech and biology blend a fine ethical line. Realising our bodies can be hacked both tickles our excitement and unsettlement, posing deeper questions about human-machine integration.

Since the first pacemaker hit the scene in 1958, powered by rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries and induction coils, progress has been steady but bound by battery limitations. Now, researchers like Jacob Robinson from Rice University are flipping the script, moving to designs that harvest energy from within. Whether through mechanical heartbeats or lung inflation, these implants are shifting to a network of energy-harvesting nodes.

From triboelectric nanogenerators made of flexible, biodegradable materials to piezoelectric devices tapping body motion is quite a leap. John Rogers at Northwestern University points out that the real challenge is balancing power extraction without harming the body’s natural function. Energy isn’t free-flowing; overharvesting could strain or damage organs. A topic we also addressed in April of this year.

As we edge toward battery-free implants, these breakthroughs could redefine biomedical tech. A good start on diving into this paradigm shift and past innovations is this article from 2023. It’ll get you on track of some prior innovations in this field. Happy tinkering, and: stay critical! For we hackers know that there’s an alternative use for everything!