DIY Dummy Battery Emulator Adapter AA

youmagine

This is an awesome way to power up your battery-powered gadget from an AC power source or a DC/USB power source as I did in this project. The plan was to retro-fit some dummy batteries into my portable speaker, so that I could use a 15000 mAh dual USB port power bank to power the speaker (and my mobile/cell phone) for longer periods while on the go. Just by chance, a friend was moving out and he had lost the AC power adapter for his iPhone/iPod docking station and he said I could have it. Great! However, I quickly found out that it would only last for a few hours before the batteries needed changing again. I thought about it and decided to make some solder-free dummy batteries to emulate the batteries in my device. I wasn't sure at first if the 5V delivered over USB was enough so I did a quick test and it worked fine. Four 1.5 Volt batteries would be 6V, not 5V, so I measured the state of some old batteries that I used in the device before they failed and they dropped to about 1.1 Volt each, giving you a combined 4.4V. It seems like it might run along the bottom line at times, but it sounds great even at high volumes! Now I have wired it up to the USB battery and all four LEDs on the USB battery are still active after six hours of music! It seems that an average, decent battery is about 1000 mAh, so this is equivalent to fifteen, instead of four. It works a treat. I hope this helps someone as it did for me. 3D Printed on a Ultimaker 3D Printer Instructions: Once printed, strip your connecting cables back about two small finger lengths and twist the ends. Feed the bare cable through the bottom hole and back through the top. Twist the cable to itself and use a cable tie to fasten the cable in place. If necessary, drill a big enough hole for the cables in the cover of your device's battery compartment and also think about making two extra holes for a cable tie to fasten the cables in place to make sure they don't get yanked at any point.