Heavy duty portable charger for usb devices (phones, iPad, etc.)

Ever needed to charge your phone on the go? Can't find a wall socket to charge your iPod?

Whenever I'm away from home for an extended period of time, I would charge my phone and mp3 player from my laptop.  This way, I get about 3 or 4 full charges out of the laptop battery and I could leave the phone and mp3 player chargers at home.  But carrying around a laptop just to charge a phone and mp3 player seemed a little excessive.

Later on I discovered the now hugely popular Minty Boost , a small battery-powered device for charging USB devices.  However, after making my own I found that the two AA batteries used in the Minty Boost just didn't have enough juice for what I needed (a couple of 2000mAh AA cells gave me about half a charge on my phone before giving out).

So I decided to combine the capacity of a laptop battery with the portability of the Minty Boost:  A heavy duty portable charger.

The device is based around a DC/DC boost circuit, a microcontroller (I used a PIC), and a handful of 18650 lithium-ion cells.  Laptop batteries usually contain 8 of these cells (although I notice my netbook only uses 3, which explains the dismal battery life). I harvested the batteries for this device from an old Dell laptop battery, but you can buy 18650 cells cheaply on ebay, (you can see one in the top right of the picture below),.

Note: for this instructable, you will require experience with circuit building, programming and using microcontrollers.  I have included my source code for the PIC12F683, but the same circuit applies to Atmel or other microprocessors.

Note2: While I have designed the simple circuit from scratch, the general principles behind such circuits are well established, I am sure many people who have built such devices will have arrived at very similar circuits.  Infringement is not intended.

Pictured is the final device charging my phone and running a USB fan at the same time, this one contains 4 18650 cells, has two USB sockets and is built into an 8cm CD wallet, which I found was a perfect size.

Step 1 Comparison with Minty Boost-type devices

Those of you familiar with Minty Boost or similar devices might point out that the benefits of the AA batteries are that, being ubiquitous, you could simply go out and buy some more if you run out of power; and that this is unfortunately not the case with 18650 cells.

My argument for using the 18650 cells are: Firstly, having built and used a Minty Boost-type device for a while, I can say that I'd rather just wait until I get back to the hotel than go out and spend money buying more cells (which would give me half a charge anyway).  Secondly, lithium-ion has about 3 times the energy density compared with NiMH cells, so for the same weight in batteries, you should be able to get by until you reach a power point before having to replace them.

So both 18650 and AA have their own advantages, here's a comparison between a Minty Boost-type device and the heavy duty charger:

Minty-Boost:
Battery type: 2 * AA
Approximate energy capacity*: 20kJ
Pros:
- Small
- Uses readily available AA batteries

18650 heavy duty charger:
Battery type: 4 * 18650 Li-ion
Approximate energy capacity*: 128kJ
Pros:
- over 6 times the energy capacity
- higher current output**

* energy capacity calculated using equation: no. batteries * battery voltage * battery Ah capacity * 3600 = energy capacity

** I've never tested maximum current output of the device, there are some issues with heat dissipation at higher output powers that limit the effective output current.

Pictured is the difference in scale between the two devices, alongside their batteries.  On the left is my own rendition of a Minty Boost-type device. built into a case that used to hold my cuff-links, running of 2 AA batteries and an LT1303 DC/DC chip (which I believe gives slightly less current out than the MAX756 of the Minty Boost).

Comments

[navarroraymond13]

i wonder what is the actual effective output current when charging a mobile phone, how long does it takes for a mobile to be full charge from fully discharge? Any idea from the author?

[meseta]

Hey, wow...it's been almost two years since I posted this, seems like forever ago.

As I understand it, it's the mobile phone charge circuitry that decides on the current. Most modern smartphones these days will charge at around 200mA when plugged into a USB port, and some will switch to a higher charge current when it detects a mains plug or compatible USB port (the mains charger has some extra resistors connected to the USB data lines on the charger, or the phone negotiates with the computer to determine if the USB port can support the current), maybe around 500mA. The iPad for example (though not a phone) I think is designed to charge at up to 1A when plugged into a compatible source.

In short if you take a typical phone battery of 2200mAh, and a typical charge current of 500mAh, then the time it takes is very approximately 2200/500 = 4.4 hours.

These are approximates, you'll want to look at your phone's battery for the battery capacity in mAh, and look at the output rating on your phone's mains charger for the input current. This output rating is the maximum rating, and is often higher than the actual current used, so pick a reasonable value lower than the maximum (mine for example is rated 0.7A, so I'm fairly sure it's charging no more than 500mA). Divide one by the other to get hours.

With home-made chargers like the one above, you can wire some resistors to the USB port to trick the phone into charging at a higher current.

[dasimpson1981]

just use a large metal plate for the heat disipation

[elinventor21]

ok i am definitely a noob at this code stuff how would i put a code from a computer into one of this ic's?

[lee321987]

The cheapest one made by the company that makes PICs is called the "Pickit". There are clones you can buy or make, for cheaper (though they may not work for as many chips as the official one).
To build your own will require a PIC programmer, so you might as well buy one.

[imakethings]

i have an inductor of 200mH will it work? i am getting a output of only a 100 ma from 2 AA batteries . should i put more batteries in parallel to get more current output??

[meseta]

yes 200mH will probably work. It depends on what is limiting your current. If it's the batteries, then putting more batteries in parallel will get you more current output (but ensure that all the cells are the same type, age, capacity, etc. to avoid unbalance). If it's the rest of the circuit, you should check the switching frequency, and switching device ratings.

[imakethings]

its 200 Milli Henry .but the max756 datasheet suggests to use upto 22 micro henry is it still ok??

[meseta]

200mH is much bigger than 22uH 200mH (milli-henries)is 0.2 Henries 22uH (micro-henries) is 0.000022 Henries. Larger inductances are generally ok for these purposes, as far as I can recall, the only disadvantages is that a 200mH inductor is much larger than a 22uH inductor, and also would have a higher resistance.

[imakethings]

i am using 1N5819 diode is it ok?

[meseta]

yes, in that case I'm not sure why your current draw is low. Try measuring the cell voltage when you draw current. If the cell voltage is a lot lower than it is when you're not drawing current, it might be an indication that your cells aren't supply enough current. In which case you may try using AA cells in parallel. Or you could try using NiCad cells.

[imakethings]

i have a 10 Milli Henry inductor which looks more or less like a resistor. is there and difference between a power inductor and a normal one? also the inductor i have gets heated up very fast...will using a power inductor help?

[meseta]

Oh yes, smaller inductors don't have the same power rating, they will heat up, but inductors are simple devices, as long as they're not getting hot, you're ok. Also, a word of warning with small sized inductors is that you may be approaching the magnetic saturation point of the material, leading to much reduced efficiency (and therefore low current out), the datasheet will contain a "saturation current" value, this is the maximum current you can run without saturation. A power inductor will help, they are designed for higher currents (and saturation), and are larger in size than normal inductors.

[imakethings]

ok thank you very much..

[imakethings]

what should i do to get a greater current output? i am using the max756 circuit. i am getting a current out put of 100 ma.. how much current do we generally get from a minty boost ?

[meseta]

If you are using a monolithic micro-power boost IC, then there's little you can do to get a higher current than its rating. However, the datasheet suggests a maximum output of 300mA from a 2.4V input (2 AA cells in series). I would recommend using a higher input voltage, i.e. 3 AA cells in series. Are you using a Schottky diode?

[imakethings]

what is the value of your inductor?

[meseta]

I'm not sure, wound it myself, and didn't have a meter that could measure inductance on hand. The last inductor I wound using approximately the same number of turns and core came out in the range of 10mH. I should mention that this value is much larger than it needs to be, I'd say approximately 100uH would have been enough.

[teknojo]

I love your design. I am looking for something like this that will handle a draw up to 300 to 500 mA. Yours will only take a 200 mA draw correct?

[meseta]

Hey,

No, the whole point of this project is to get a higher current draw than you can from a cheap micro-power converter.

The maximum theoretical current that can be drawn from this is something around 2.5A. (Given the transistor is rated 5.5A, and the 4 cells themselves can supply something in the range of 6A, and we're talking about a boost from around 3V minimum up to 5V at a minimum efficiency of 80%)

Now practically, the current is probably most limited by heat dissipation, but I'm sure you can do 500mA with no problem.

[imakethings]

good one..does the pic ic replaces the max756 of the minty boost in this circuit? can you suggest modifications in the minty boost circuit itself?

[meseta]

Yes, actually the MAX756 is more than that, it also has a the transistor and voltage reference.  So in reality, the PIC, transistor and voltage reference diode replaces the MAX756.
(also note that the MAX756 probably has some analog circuitry to perform the task, whereas the PIC is a microcontroller)

Hmm... for the minty boost circuit, you could do one of the following:
1. use 18650 cells.  But you'd still be limited to the current output of the MAX756

2. add an output disconnect transistor: the minty boost circuit won't allow you to add more than 3 AA batteries, their website says " In fact, with 4 batteries, the output voltage is 6V which is too high and could theoretically damage your device!" .  The truth is that 6V is probably fine, since the maximum of the MAX756 is 7V, the only problem with using a 6V is that the MAX756 is a BOOST circuit, and therefore unable to reduce the voltage to produce the needed 5V output.

The way around this is to use an output disconnect transistor, I found this little circuit on the LT1303 datasheet (LT1303 is another DC/DC Boost IC), scroll down to the ffirst figure on page 10.

The addition of a PNP transistor and resistor will allow you to use a higher input voltage and still be able to produce a regulated 5V out.  You can now use 4 AA alkaline batteries to the minty boost (max voltage 6V), or 5 AA NiMH batteries (also 6V).  OR if you used an LT1303 instead, which has a higher input maximum, you could go up to 5 to 6 AA alkalines, or 7 to 8 AA NiMH

3.  there's one thing you could theoretically do with a MAX756 circuit to increase its power output: you should theoretically be able to connect the LX pin of the MAX756 to a high power PNP transistor.  Because it's the internal transistor that is limiting your output current (hence why I opted to go for a transistor of my own selection), by connecting a transistor externally, this is like turning the circuit into a darlington pair.  I may try this at some point, I'll post an instructable if I do.

hope some of this helps.

[imakethings]

thank you very much.waiting for your next instructable with MAX 756!

[Tetrafluoroethane]

I was curious as to what drove your decision to use a PIC vs a dedicated switch mode controller chip.  I know you mentioned the micro-power chips were under-powered in your opinion, but there are plenty of regulators which allow you to supply your own external switching element and simply do the PWM, thus allowing you to scale to a wide range of powers.

[meseta]

The main reasons was that I was making something with the material I had, I have PICs, but no dedicated DC/DC chips.  Although I did think about ordering some LT1070 ICs, but those things are comparatively expensive.

You're right in that if I wanted to make this into a polished product, I would probably use something like that.  But this was more of a "hack together what you have" kind of project.