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Posts: 364 | Thanked: 54 times | Joined on Feb 2008
#114
Originally Posted by jamesc760 View Post
External Battery Pack for about $5:

I've made an external battery pack for not much more than $5.00 total, excluding the batteries. I had a battery case from an RC car. It can hold 4 AA batteries for 6 V output. I ordered an AC charger/adapter from Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Travel-Adapter...324041&sr=8-14) for under $5.00 includling shipping. What I did was to cut the cord off the charger and then attached the remaining cord to the battery pack. I had some AA NiMH batteries laying around, so I inserted 4 of these puppies in the battery pack and then connected it to the N800's power jack. Voila! The battery starts charging. I'm going to do some testing and experiement. The NiMH batteries are rated 1600 mAh each. I don't have a multimeter where I'm right now so I can't really measure the output voltage but I'm sure it's somewhere around 5.2 volts when fully charged.

After about 20 minutes of charging, my N800 went from 56% charged to 74 %.

Yes, it looks ghetto, but for $5 spent on it and the fact that it works and works rather, I am pleased.

I took some pictures. I'll post them later,

Ciao,
COOLNESS...!!! Wanna see it!!!

Since you mention it, I have not as yet tried to power my tablet with the battery pack I have. I use 4-AA @ 2000mA which output a steady 5.2v but I wimped out and got a Tekkeon MP1550 simply because it's voltage regulated and my pocket router is kinda fragile that way...Still with shipping the Tekkeon was about $20 or maybe a tad more, I forget.

But, I have read several folks who built their battery packs from 10,000mA D-cells...why didn't I ever think of that option!! d'oh!! I know I simply MUST try that one day soon.

I do have to gather a pic of my whole "workstation kit" I have now. It all, including the iGo Stowaway keyboard, router, battery pack, 2 extra sets of 4AA batteries, the tablet and Cradlepoint CTR350 router, but it all fits easily into this tiny camera case I have for my old Olympus digital camera...hated that camera but it was a gift...the bag finally was of use...