Introduction: Easy Portable USB Charger
Tutorial to show how to make a quick, cheap and easy portable USB charger for around $10 without knowing how to build complex circuits!
Used the following products:
USB Car Charger (Dollar Store)
8 AA Battery Holder (Radioshack)
8 AA Batteries (Dollar Store)
Project Enclosure (Radioshack)
23 Comments
7 years ago
would it work to make it without a switch?
8 years ago on Introduction
Good job enough ma to power a device
9 years ago on Introduction
Great Idea! but, you only need 7.2 volts to run the car charger, so you could do this with only 6 batteries.
9 years ago on Introduction
Can i make it with only 4 pcs LSD rechargeable battery?
9 years ago on Introduction
excellent, but what if you wanted to add rechargeable batteries and a solar panel? circuit of the car is a great idea!... Might add an optional diagram!?
9 years ago on Introduction
One little problem with this build was toward the end where the wire leads coming from the battery pack (the junctures with the extensions) were exposed so that they could potentially short. All they need is a little shrink tubing or some tape.
9 years ago
What size is the project enclosure
9 years ago on Introduction
where would you get the wire (green wire that connects switch and the main board)
9 years ago
Where can you get wire like that? The short piece you used?
9 years ago on Introduction
you can try to use 4x li-ion batteryes all of them are strong and reliable, I'm doing a sim
illar project and getting great resutls with liion. :) took my old laptop battery, disasembled it and took the batteries out...
9 years ago
can this burn out the battery of any phone?
10 years ago
I tried this it turns on my USB powered light but it won't register on my IPod
Do you know why
Reply 10 years ago on Introduction
Did you connect the data pins.These are the two middle pins. Apple is really evil and makes it hard for everybody to do anything involving their projects.
10 years ago on Introduction
Can using a battery pack damage the phone in any way?
10 years ago on Introduction
Can you share the charging times please? Thank you.
Max
10 years ago
I could also instead of 8 AAs use a 1or2 9v's that way it would be more compact, yes?
Reply 10 years ago on Introduction
yes, but 9v doesnt have enough mah, it think.they can charge only 30-40 % i think
10 years ago
Nice simple design. I am working on a similar charger that incorporates a solar panel as well to charge NiMH batteries while camping. I am a novice, but understand that the 12 volt car charger converts 12 V to 5 V. As long as you have an input of around 5V, I would think it should also work and 4 AA batteries should suffice. There are similar chargers described that run on 4 NiMH batteries (4.8 V). Has anyone tried this?
Reply 10 years ago on Introduction
i did, you can also make charger like mine(find it on my profile) but use only rechargeable 9v battery with solar panel. or you can use 4x1.2 v battery and solar panel,on battery of my phone(zte skate) there says that min. voltage for charging phone is 4.2 v, so almost dead batterys can charge my phone (4.2/4 = 1.05 )
also you can use 3x1.2 v battery and charge only battery directly (but i dont prefer that way),....there is 1000 ways to make portable phone charger, for camping maybe best is to use thermoelectric generator like kipkay.......uhhhh 1000 ways, 1000choice , and 0 hours to spend on each of them
10 years ago
Will it charge an iPhone from being flat to 100%? How long do the batteries last?