I also have some 3.6V cell phone batteries that I attached the wires to
and that indicated they were charging. Would it be OK to use these, or
not? Also, maybe I can make an external adapter for the thicker
batteries using something like an Altoids tin? Maybe with the device I
could charge batteries externally too.
On Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:03:31 -0500, wrote:
On Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:55:39 -0500, wrote:
On Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:27:16 +0200, EdorFaus wrote:
On 10/11/2011 07:46 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Does it matter that I touched both color wires of each one to
the terminals?
This may be my problem. When I cut one strand of wire, there are
already
2 types of wire, copper and red/green. Maybe I should use THOSE 2
instead of 2 separate strands of 2?
Let me see if I understand you correctly: you have two lengths of
headphone wire, both of them with two wires in it (one
not-insulated
plain copper, and one insulated (with a color)), and you have
connected both wires of one length to + on the battery and + on the
Ben, and both wires of the other length to - on the battery and -
on
the Ben? And neither length is connected to the other?
If so, this should not be a problem in itself, as long as there is
an
electrical connection - but you should only really need one wire
for
each of + and -, so you could instead use just one length and e.g.
connect the uninsulated wire to - on both, and the insulated one
(after stripping some of its insulation) to + on both.
Or if you prefer to use two lengths, you could connect just one
wire
from each (e.g. the uninsulated copper wire).
In either case you need to be careful so that + and - don't touch
each other anywhere - there must be some isolation between the two.
One thing you can try is, after connecting the wires to the
battery,
measure the other ends of the wires to see if there's a good
voltage
there. If not, there either isn't a good connection between the
wires
and the battery, or (at least one of) the wires is broken.
To figure out which wire has the problem, you can measure between
the
other end of the + wire and the - connector on the battery (or vice
versa), if that gives a good voltage then that wire should be OK.
Once you've connected the wires to the Ben, you can measure on its
contacts to see if there's a good voltage there - if there is, you
should be good to go (as long as you haven't gotten + and -
reversed).
Oh ok I did not know I have to strip the colored wire because that
means insulation. I will try again using only 2 wires. Thanks
_______________________________________________
OK so I found a line in / headphone wire and cut it and stripped it,
finding that it insulated a red and black wire. I separated those and
stripped some of the ends. I tied the closest thing I could to a knot
around the battery ends of the Ben and twisted the ends a bit to
prevent slipping under mechanical tension. Then I put the Ben
upright,
attached the other ends to the marked and corresponding ends, and I
tried to secure the wire to the battery terminals by winding a rubber
band around it a few times. Since the connection was dodgy at first,
I
heard what sounded like the speaker popping as the final unconnected
wire touched briefly with the terminal. But I saw the screen light up
for a millisecond. I knew I was in. I later taped the wires in place
on the battery, and in addition pressed them down to maintain contact
and voila, this hack was succesful!
As for the practicability, it may be questionable, but the liberty of
the hack is considerable. This means in an emergency or even if I
just
wanted to be hard-core, I could use my Samsung, Motorola, LG, Nokia,
etc. 3.7V batteries to get some life out of my Nano. For some
batteries, they would need wires because they would not fit in the
casing. For others, that are actually too small and with misaligned
contacts, I still dream of an easy way to get a thin strip of copper
or some other metal and bend it with small plyers into an "l" shape
to
sort of extend the Ben battery contacts by only a few mm, then stuff
paper or some other shim on the back side of the battery to make a
nice tight sandwich. I may be off base though.
Needless to say, this opens up SO many more batteries that are usable
and recyclyable from old phones and such, I even have a camcorder
that
no longer works that is 3.7V 850Mah that I lost the charger to. If
you
are willing to go a little caveman, as I now am, you can power your
Nano with almost any kind of cheap available battery. Of course
provided the voltage is right.
Any ideas how I can make this cleaner? Perhaps alligator clips or a
better type of wire?
This hack has empowered me that much more! Thanks for the help.
Maybe Werner can make copyleft plans to make an adapter for most 3.7V
batteries. That would be cool.
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