A super-low-cost NiMH-Battery
charger
Have you ever wondered how to charge
the batteries of your digital camera, you GPS etc. while you are abroad,
in your car, or at home? Well if you have a 5Volt mobile phone you can
use your phone or your phones charger to do that. Just look at the backside
of your phones batterie. If it says 4.8Volt NiMH then there is no good
reason why your phone should not be able to charge your NiMH Batteries
for you.
I have an Ericsson I888 Dualband
Worldphone (GSM 900/PCS 1900) that is a very good example.
I just bought two AA battery holder
and glued them on the backside of an old battery hausing. The plastic can
be opened with a screwdriver and some force but take care not to hurt yourself!
I took out the batteries and soldered two short wires from the connetion
points to the battery holder.
This way you can put the batteries
in the holder an put the whole thing in your phones desktop charger.
Or you can even put it on your mobile
phone to charge the batteries. This is very convinient since you can also
charge your batteries in your car with the car charger. Since most manufacturers
travel chargers can operate from 100 Volts to 250 Volts you don't even
have to care about the voltage when you travel from europe to the US or
vice versa.
All this hints are without
any guarantee. If you kill your phone, your batteries or yourself while
you try it out then it is purely your problem. Experiment on your own risk!!!
If
you came here directly, please also visit my main page for more technical
toys...