Crank Radio Charger

make your crank radio into an usb charger. sorry about the blurry pictures

Step 1 Open radio

Comments

[chaoschao99]

wait whats piggybacking mean, im new to all the terms here and i was just wondering what wire do i connect to where, thanks

[benjgvps]

Also, I wouldn't even do this. I made this four years ago before I knew too much about anything electronic. I'm also cringing at my grammar and spelling that I used. I don't even use that silly little iPod any more, I own a 30 GB Zune :) I would personally check out: http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/

[benjgvps]

Piggybacking meant that you would strip the wires connecting to the battery (Preferably without breaking them) and attach your own wires. You would connect the positive wire (Red) from the battery to the red positive wire on the USB cable. Do the same for the black wires.

[fender-electric-guitar]

hey i was wondering if i could hook the red and black to a 6 volt battery pack would it work? without breaking the ipod?

[benjgvps]

 I would probably put some sort of 5V regulator in there.

[spinach_dip]

Some quick math. The iPod 3G has a 3.7V 630mAh battery. Total power is 2.3 Watt hours. At best the crank radio generator will give you 1 watt, and since you're charging a battery inside the radio and charging the ipod off that battery, you're at best at 50% efficiency from crank to ipod battery, so you're looking at 4-5 hours of solid cranking. The nano battery is 1.2 watt hours, so that would be around 2.5 hours of cranking to charge. Of course this is in theory, I wouldn't mind hearing reports of how it works in practice.

[casper.707]

I have a sony walkman mp3 player,the one that only comes with a usb cable, and I was wondering if by any chance you would know about how long this would take to charge it. P.S. Neither the mp3 player nor any of the packaging say the voltage.

[benjgvps]

I don't know, I don't own one and I don't use the radio to charge my iPod anymore, just to get a few more minutes of play time.

[blog.darkforestdesign.com]

I do not have very much circuit experience at all, so this may be a dumb idea: BUT, could you increase efficiency by connecting the USB power directly to the crank, as opposed to connecting it to the wires from the battery? I do know USB power should be 5v, and this may be a bad idea because crank power probably fluctuates like crazy. But if the crank charges the battery in the radio just fine, wouldn't it charge the iPod battery fine? I'm not sure! Somebody more knowledgeable should comment.

[trebuchet03]

There is probably a regulator to charge the battery and run other components... And I would not plug in a $300+ device into an unregulated power supply :/ Modify this to fit on a bike and run off cylcing power... That would be very useful - and healthy :P

[dfc849]

i have done it with my ipod nano, and it just sits there and the battery meter sometimes goes down because of no regulation but like siletto said, it shows the charge icon when you unplug it. It does not hurt my nano but it didnt make it better (charged) either :]

[talonsblade]

you could rip out the crank and set it up to recharge some rechargable AA's and then use mintyboost to charge the ipod

[siletto]

i have a problem. When i connected my ipod, nothing happened. But when i turned the ipod off, thecharging symbol pops on. Did you guys experience the same thing? Does anyone know how to fix this?

[dfc849]

this is most likely wrong circuitry - you really cannot charge it just off of 3 1.5V bateries - you will have to make a circuit board thingamajig with resistors and crap

[themindfantastic]

I was hoping that it would mention which 2 wires were being hooked into on the USB extender, I am sure I could find out online, but it might be important for those who might not be familiar with which wires are which in a USB cable.

[naikrovek]

what's it like to charge? does it take a very long time or does it take a reasonable amount of time. I seem to remember something like this being done but with one of those hand cranked flashlights; it took ages to charge the ipod enough to get it to fully boot.

[C01d Fusion]

very ingenius...never would have thought to do that. I will be attempting this very soon. Good Idea!