Make an Emergency Phone Charger - MacGyver Style!

In this video, you'll learn how to "MacGyver" a 40 Watt Electrical Generator from a cordless drill and a few household items.  Here's how to charge a phone, illuminate small lights, and make electricity in a pinch.

For more projects like this, check out www.thekingofrandom.com

Step 1: Watch the Video!

Note: This project is intended to be a "bare-bones" approach to generating electricity in a tight situation.  There are no voltage regulators, no diodes and no capacitors to smooth the current.  There may a risk of overheating and damaging equipment when operating electrical devices without a proper circuit recommended by the manufacturer. 

It worked fine for me, but if you try this on your phone make sure you understand, and are comfortable with, the risks.  Back up your data in case your phone is adversely affected and your data or equipment is damaged as a result.

Comments

[KeenaH]

Love your stuff man, ingenious

[Ibenos]

How much volt can i get from a toy motor?

[yankee2442]

You need to enter this in the MacGyver contest!

[The King of Random]

I wish I could. I made it before the contest opened.

[Timofte Andrei]

i have an idea and a question in the same time... is it possible to use the motor from electric drill as a wind generator without the gearbox, of course?... I have 4 expired number plates made from aluminum and i want to use them as some sort of blades for a small wind turbine, but i don't have any idea where to find a proper generator that could charge few UPS batteries. :D

[The King of Random]

I've thought about that, and I think it would work!

[illusive_311]

I am contemplating using this for a "How to" project in college. I have tried three different cordless drills and am unable to get either one of them to turn by hand. Is there a particular type of cordless drill that is needed. Of the three that I attempted to use, it seemed as if something was going to "break" when I tried to forcefully rotate it to generate power.

[omnibot]

This will only work with Nimh or NiCad powered drills. LiPo or Li-Ion powered dittos have a protectioncircuit between motor and battery. Also some higher end models have PWM-circuits that does not allow for this kind of charging.
Though I'd mention it.

[The King of Random]

Good to know, thanks for mentioning it!

[The King of Random]

From my experience, if it feels like it will break if you force it, it usually does.

Check the settings on the drill. Is it locked? Is the torque setting set to the drill bit setting? Is the mechanism set to one direction or the other?

Also, are you pressing the trigger when you're turning it?

All these factors make a big difference.

Think of it this way .. operate it exactly as if you were drilling a piece of wood .. but do it by hand. Everything else is the same.

[FJMSoft]

I would sugest to add a voltage regulator, so you protect the cell phone.
It is very cheap and easy to use.

[zwheel]

   That was my first thought too. But... a voltage regulator is going to waste a lot of your power as heat. He did say it took 3 hours to charge the battery! If you are in an immediate emergency where you have to cobble something like this together just to call 911 I think you just want all the power to go to the phone. His method of manually regulating the voltage by varying his crank speed as he watches the battery indicator should be good enough in that kind of situation.



   Of course.. in an emergency is it really necessary to charge it all the way? Charge it enough to connect and make your 911 call already!



   If I was going to look for another source of cranking power, bike, wind, water, etc.. like he mentions I would definitely include a regulator! Anything like that though would already be a longer-term project, not an immediate emergency anyway.



   Also, if the phone actually implements the USB standard as written it should be pretty flexible with input voltage. The standard says USB ports should be 5V but devices should be able to handle more than that (I forget the exact number). Many cheap car power adapters actually get away with just sending the 12V from the car straight into the phone! (Don't do that) Not everything really implements the standard though so I wouldn't rely on that for day to day use.

[The King of Random]

You're right about that, but that's beyond the scope of this project.

Thanks :)

[FJMSoft]

It costs just some cents, but ok.

[The King of Random]

I know you're right .. but this project was gear for someone who needs electricity with just things on hand. Most people probably won't know where to find a voltage regulator in a tight situation.

[skipjack2001]

This is actually pretty useful during a power outage.. or zombie apocalypse... or a shipwreck on a deserted island.

[The King of Random]

lol. I'm glad you found some value in it :)

[The Lightning Stalker]

Good luck fixing your computer when you accidentally short those alligator clips together.

[The King of Random]

Nothing happens that I've been able to observe.

[The Lightning Stalker]

That is good because a lot of times it will blow a tiny fuse that is almost impossible to find; and that is a best-case scenario.

[The King of Random]

Thanks for the warning :)

[dreams1]

I've been wondering if there was some way to charge a phone using a bicycle... charge and get exercise, too.. :)

[The King of Random]

Definitely! You could use this method, and I'm also planning to to a project using an alternator to charge a car battery.

[danny6114]

Instead of a hand crank, couldn't you use a piece of steel or whatever of appropriate length to chuck into another variable speed drill attached to the charger drill and save some physical labor? As one might guess, I'm lazy.

[The King of Random]

If you have two drills and one is charged, you certainly can! You could also hook it up to a windmill or bicycle, etc for a lower labor approach :)

[Jollyrgr]

If you have a charged drill you could simply use its battery.

[The King of Random]

That's true. You'd have to introduce some resistors into the circuit, but it could work!

[doctorkred]

My first commentary in Instructables is for you: Fantastic (sorry, but i write/speak english very bad)

In Blackberry is July 30, my birhtday :)

[The King of Random]

Hey that's great! I appreciate having your first comment! July 30th was the day I made it. Happy belated birthday :)

[guicarlorobelli]

I've been hooked on your videos after seeing this one. I really appreciate your innovation and if I can ever find a place to buy acrylic locally, I will be building a water generator like yours. Thanks!!

[The King of Random]

Thanks for your awesome feedback! I decided to do the step-by-step instructables because the website seems to like them better. Thanks for checking it out again :) I have a lot of new projects I'm working on so am happy to get new stuff to you soon!

[Angelbane]

The step by step approach is what Instructables is about ... I am getting tired of the "show off" Instructables that actually don't instruct you about the project.

In short, Thank You Sir.

[The King of Random]

You're welcome! :)

[Treknology]

I also prefer the step-by-step approach. It forces the author to focus on what the reader needs to know whereas many videos are bloated. One recent one in particular (not yours) contained 10 minutes of a guy cutting strips----no commentary with dimensions or other useful information, just cutting... Not only was this mind-numbing, but frustrating as he was using the table-saw incorrectly and very dangerously. If an inexperienced person follows his cutting technique and gets injured, who's liable?

In another case, I paid $50 for a 20-minute video of another guy hand-assembling an extremely simple electronic circuit. Such a video should have deliberately been aimed at "super-dummies" who've never assembled anything before. Otherwise, a proper schematic with the correct component-descriptions on a single A4 page would have sufficed. If further research reveals that I can legally re-publish, I will be putting it up here as an i'ble.

[ericocean]

Some things in your projects always make me smile: this time it was the 3 hour cranking time to charge the phone battery. Valiant effort! It made me think that you could possibly walk in under 3 hours to where you intended to call in the first place. But that would not nearly be as instructive or as much MacGyver fun. Nice creative use of your grey matter, super project, good fun, great presentation as always. Thanks for that.

[The King of Random]

Thank you! In reality you'd only have to crank for about 10 minutes to get enough charge to make a phone call. I just wanted to see how long it would take to completely charge the phone.

Thanks for your feedback, and I'm glad to hear you appreciate the little details!

[FlippityWidget]

Just curious; what's the chance of damaging the phone by "cranking out" too much voltage? Other than that I really like this idea. I suppose if you're stuck somewhere and your phone is dead and you have an emergency and you have no other way of charging the phone AND you just happen to have a rechargeable drill with the right equipment to pull this off it's worth the risk of damaging your phone. I'm more interested in how this could be applied to charging larger batteries such as lead-acid car batteries. Also, this makes me wonder what other devices I might have around the house that I could convert into electrical generators in a pinch.

[The King of Random]

Thanks for your feedback and your question. I believe this would actually work better for charging larger lead-acid type batteries. Higher voltage batteries would require spinning the drill faster so maybe it could be hooked up to a bicycle to accomplish that. I didn't notice any damage to my phone from doing this, but my goal was to just spin it barely fast enough to get the charging symbol. That was my safeguard against over voltage. I hope that helps!

[Treknology]

Please note that if the selected drill has any form of "electronic speed control", it will require more dis-assembly than merely removing the battery as such electronics will probably impede the original intent of this project.

I also suggest connecting your USB wires directly to the battery contacts (or internal equivalent). The use of "foil" introduces more problems than it solves.

Was this just an experiment, or did you really need to charge your phone manually?

[JamesRPatrick]

Now I have a use for my broken Black and Decker!