Quick & Easy iPod Charger / Portable DC Accessory Jack

This is a S U P E R simple design that will allow you to run many different DC accessories off a simple battery pack.

Step 1 Obtain the parts

1 ea - DC Accessory Jack
1 ea - Battery Holder (x8 AA)
1ea - 9V Accessory Lead
8 ea - AA Batteries
1 ea - Velcro Cable Wrap
1 ea - Car iPod Charger (optional)

Comments

[PR22]

Clever idea. It's one of those things I don't really have a use for, but would keep in my glove box in case the opportunity ever arises where I need a portable 12v DC jack. One idea i just had is to make it work with rechargeable AA batteries and make it so you can run a cable with a diode from your car DC jack to the battery DC jack. Then when the batteries are dead you can recharge it in your car.

[alex-sharetskiy]

the current supplied by your car battery will fry your battery!

[PR22]

I was under the impression that devices only draw as much current as they need. But you wouldn't want to run 12v straight through the battery. You would drop it to 2 or 3volts and charge it more slowly.

[alex-sharetskiy]

well, do this, drain a ni-cad batttery, so the voltage Stays 0 now take an ohm meter and measure the resistance, you will find it relatively low you car battery can supply 1000A, no problem, your batteries shouldn't be charged with more then 500Ma/h

[nerfster]

I bought a car power converter so the ciggeret lighters are like the power outlets in your house. do you think you could step it up a bit and and have a portible house outlet in your back pack or somtin?

[alex-sharetskiy]

Won't work, not enough power

[alex-sharetskiy]

VERY clever!

[computerwiz_222]

This is cool, but a bit unnecessary... Most 12 volt charges have some sort of step down inside them... So you a re wasting a lot of energy here. You are going from high to low when you can simply go from low to low voltage. Cool idea though! If I saw this in stores, I would probably buy it.

[nolan22]

awesome instructible

[garrettmikesmith]

check out this:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/clearance/8900/
it can power anything usb- without a car charger

[harari]

Great !! now i can charge my 4 AA rechargable batteries with my GP PowerBank Travel car charger with ONLY 8 batteries ! ha ha ha ...

[GreenApple123]

i bought an iPod battery charger from http://www.laptopsforless.com/mp3playerbattery/apple-ipod-Battery and i like it but can i use it to charge any other devices?

[mickey shimitz]

Can you power like a gameboy with this?

[Timonosuke]

EXCELLENT! The whole project is simple, yet provides a cheap and easily produced way of creating a battery recharger. This IS the solution I've been searching for. Thank you.

[radiorental]

nice idea. I like the concept of standardising on one connector type be that USB or 12v car lighter and then build your setup around that. So you only need one cable for each device and not seperate USB & car charger & wall charger etc

[Dark]

Tumbleweed, you came up with a briliant solution. I would probably use this while camping or just to keep in my backback. Also, since you have an output that high, you can use it to charge 3g-5g ipods. I was looking for a similar solution to my problem for those weeks that i'm away from home, so I thank you.

[Tumbleweed]

Hope you guys find this one useful. I was going to build one of the spiffy Altoids tin iPod chargers, but got to realizing I already had this car adapter just needed a simple hack to make it work....