Slashdot Mirror
Build Your Own iPod Battery
OmniVector writes "With various complaints about the iPod battery's life, and its mere 10-8 hours of charge many of us are left looking for a way to keep the tunes kicking a little longer. Drew Perry has come up with a novel solution which can only run you a few bucks for an extra 10 hours of battery life out of a box of playing cards and a everyday batteries. Not bad for that long car trip where you just don't have a firewire charger handy."
Yeah, that way you can funnel your hard earned cash to Apple AND their buddies at Belkin in order to get the product you paid a huge amount of money for working properly.
Read Pynchon.
Hey, I have an idea!!! Store all the ripped songs on you PC/Mac's hard disk, and copy a chunk of them over to the ipod when needed.
Nah, that's too obvious.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Because for 7 hours you have 10,000 songs to pick from to listen to.
But I agree. I think that for example, the cast-benefit ratio is better for buying a cd-player that play's mp3-cd's than a HD-based player right now.
Instead of using NiMH or Alkaline AA battery pairs, Li-ion batteries are fantastic too. A comparison with 2xAA batteries and CR-V3 batteries show that CR-V3 battery charges last longer and have a longer lifespan.
Wouldn't it be better to use the rechargable batteries you can buy at BestBuy or Target instead of burning up those AAs and 9vs for 10 hrs of play time?
Who, when advertising, underestimated the possible battery life? All the quotes I remember about battery life (but I have not checked for the iPod) are based on "optimum conditions" or "up to" however long.
Whoever the manufacturer I think their claims (max speed, time, savings etc) are mainly calculated, theoretical maximums.
Real life is rarely optimised.
Tracker.
Theoretically, if two batteries rated for the same voltage are connected positive-to-positive and negative-to-negative, no current will flow between them. In practice there may be a small difference in the potential at the positive terminal of one with respect to the other which would result in some current drain. At some point however the differential would vanish due to the discharging and current would cease to flow.
I propose that batteries in parallel are fine as long as you replace them simultaneously.
In the first picture, there are a GP and a Varta 9V battery in parallel, with at least two cells, at least one of which is rechargable. So, 9 + (2 x 1.2) = 11.4 V.
In the second picture, there are two Varta 9V primary batteries in parallel, placed in series with two 1.5V Duracell alkalines. So, 9 + (2 x 1.5) = 12 V.
We can assume the difference in non-load voltage is not relevant. But when we consider the power available:
The capacity of each PP9 Varta is at most 450 mAh. (Rechargables are 110 mAh to 150 mAh). Taking the best case in parallel, therefore, 900 mAh. The rechargable AA's are about 1350 to 2300 mAh. If primary AA's are used, then figure on 2400 mAh.
So for an all-primary solution, the AA cells have 2.5 times the life of the PP9 cells. Basically, this design eats PP9 cells and there's no real way of telling which batteries/cells are running out at any given moment.
If one's going to go for a primary cell solution, then it would be better to have, say, 3 x 2CR5 in series or 3 x CR-P2 in series. But obviously a rechargable pack is the optimal solution because it's way cheaper in the long run. Buy them all together, Use them together, recharge them together. Check out packs used for digital cameras.
I'm just curious; where do you listen to your iPod or any music player for that matter 7 hours a row? Traveling maybe? I'm quite sure you would able to use external power source part of that time.
Personally I can't get up to 7 hours a day even if I listen every moment I can.
And would people please stop to post these iPod battery stories? The whole is has become highly exaggerated.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
1) Different battery types will lead to different discharge rates... in other words, when a battery is flat, you have to take them all out and test individually.
/. has sunk to? I mean, there's got to be funnier or cleverer stuff than this out there.
2) The circuit is hardly clever or novel; no lights to tell you when the batteries are reading the end of their useful life.
3) Gluing plastic on cardboard.... does this pass for elegent or clever? If so, let me show you some really "clever" things I've done with a fanbelt at 3 AM to keep my car going.
4) is this was
If you are going to do all that, why not put a car battery in a backpack and put a voltage regulator on it? The best point of the iPod is that it is sleek and slender, now what have you just done when you 'add' a battery?
The charger would be trying to deliver twice the designed current, by trying to pump up the pulse voltage(I assume they use a charge/rest/discharge technique), plus any bad battery detection/safety cutout would be negated.
Is would be interesting to watch, but I'll be standing over *there* while you try, if you don't mind...
Anecdotal? Are you fucking kidding me?
Yes, anecdotal. No, I'm not fucking kidding you. You're being an idiot for making such blanket assessments about the security industry on the basis of "what you've heard in the news". Look it up. (Hint: Based on casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis)
Your assessment that security people are stupid is based on anecdotal evidence - i.e. NON-SCIENTIFIC
Were it non-anecdotal, you would include, along with your 'counter-view', the observation that, in fact, countless thousands and thousands of 'potential battery-bomb incidents' actually get correctly assessed as being non-threatening.
You would include the hundreds and thousands of times when cameras and film are actually put through the machine, and do actually survive. It might surprise you, but technology has changed. There are safe scanning machines on the market, and in active use, pretty much everywhere.
Your system of logic is flawed, and derived from a society driven by controversy and conflict, tabloid-idealized notions. That is not the way life actually is...
And in fact, yes, I do happen to know quite a few travelling photographers, many of them businessmen (as I am myself), and I have also filled 4 passports in my life, in my travels. So yes, in fact, I do have a lot of experience in this matter and I do know what I'm talking about.
Your ideal is flawed.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm not trolling, but you bring up an interesting point; do you know of anyone who will accept batteries for recyclying or safe disposal?
--
The batteries that destroyed the CoLo would have been the heavy-duty supersized ones that go in UPS'es and the like. Those really are dangerous if you handle them incorrectly. The ordinary batteries you can buy at the grocery store, however, almost never explode, especially not the non-rechargeable kinds. Besides, if you are carrying this box in your pocket, and a battery explodes, you will have more important things to worry about than whether the box catches fire or not...
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
IIRC, internally the CPUs and memory chips will operate at either ~3V or ~5.5V, so the voltage will be stepped down in either case.
:D
two 9V batteries will not be discharging through one another. One of them can not go flat, they are in parallel, if one goes flat, THEN the other will discharge through it, in effect, charging it(if it were rechargeable). But the effect is negligable, they will reach equilibriun.
I would go personally with a bunch of AA batteries since they tend to have longer life under load. 9V seems to be passe for devices which have human interaction.
6 AA in series would do the trick, and you can likely get a package to hold them at Radio Shack.
And I would say he has passed EE101, it was a good freshman level attempt. On paper it works
Would you claim that a 12 inch PowerBook isn't really a portable comptuer because you can't run it the whole day on just batteries? I think it is silly to bash Apple, just because you don't WANT to use an external power source. It would have been an option you would have got for free. And there are still other options for you if you can't use/don't want to external power source like this story and TheRaven64 points out.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
I know I am just a geeky physisist by education :-), can anybody tell me what in the world was the reason to use two 9V and two 1,5V cells and connect them in a funny way, when one could just take eight AAA cells. 8x1,5V=12V bingo!
...
That will be even cheaper. And would last longer. And will fit into cardbox as well. And
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Batteries in parallel (like those 9Vs) are bad, mixing battery types in series (such as AA and 9V in series), or even in brand (different brands of AA batteries) is very bad. If you're going to build this project, use 8 AA batteries in a simple series, unless you like having a pocket full of battery acid.
Where do you find the time to listen to music when you are on the phone that much?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Whereas you, apparently, enjoy the ego boost of thinking you're elite for defending a poor little corporation from the evils of fickle users like me who actually demand products that work as advertised.
I know restocking fees are real. I simply think Apple should wear the cost of a return if they can't print accurate information in their advertising material. I did read the specs. The spec sheet they gave me stated "Battery life: 8 hours," with no disclaimer that this meant "8 hours playing 1kbps mono static in one continuous track with the volume set to zero." First time out in the real world, it was dead withing 5 1/2 hours.
Don't even bother to give me any of this bs about how I should be wary of advertisers claims: I know I should be wary, and they should be wary of me. If they give misleading information, I am not just going to bend over and take it whilst praising Apple's design aesthetic. If you lived in the 'real world', you wouldn't have hundreds of dollars to flush down the toilet on things that don't work properly.
Read Pynchon.
There's a difference between asking someone a few questions, scanning their coat, checking their other clothing and carry-on luggage and that of any travelling companions and automatically treating someone like they've committed a crime and giving them the "bright lights in their eyes" treatment for daring to wear a common piece of clothing.
On the other hand, there's the total incompetence of allowing a passenger to travel with live ammo.
I'd rather live in a world where fuck-ups were of the first kind than of the latter kind but they're both pretty good examples that security at airports isn't perfect. What good is the vigilance that flags up so many false positives if the actual positives are totally missed?
And on top of that, some of the security systems are inherently flawed. Someone recently tried entering Osama bin Laden's name on the US fly/no-fly list only to find that the US's number one target was cleared to travel. Now we all know that bin Laden isn't going to be flying into the US on a commercial flight using his own name any time soon but it's just another indicator that the systems that the US has put in place to prevent potential hijackers from boarding aircraft isn't totally up to the job.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
In my experience, the TSA people have always been unfailingly polite, but I suspect that's because I start out by being polite to them, for two reasons. First, why not be polite to everyone? Second, Why be rude to someone who is capable of making your life miserable and leaving you with no recourse?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Better having those guys there, rude and all, than having a real terrorist making his way into the plane and putting and end to your life.
That's a standard example of FUD, as well as a standard example of a nonsequitur. There are some analyses which point out that, prior to any airport security, there were a number of hijackings to Cuba. Nobody was hurt. Then, as security got tighter and tighter, the number of hijackings went down but the death tolls went way up.
The "Better X than Y" just doesn't fly here, any more than "Better the (anti-)Patriot Act than more OK City bombings" routine being foisted on us by the clowns in DC.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Anytown America airport. Security today was brought to you by the lowest bidder.
While this doesn't seem like an incredibly safe thing to do, it's certainly nice to see someone actually doing something about his battery instead of just bitching.
No one seems to care about the fact that the guy didn't say how to connect the batteries to the FireWire connector! I mean, which pins to use, etc.
:P
He seemed more interested in explaining how to build a horrible case with the playing cards case
Wouldn't a couple diodes do the trick?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Nowhere did I say "Can't afford." Rather, my opinion is that the price is unjustifiably high for what you get. You could certainly argue that about the ipod itself, as you mention, and the high price of it is pretty much why I don't have one. I could afford one, but I don't see the ipod as offering sufficient extra bang for the large amount of extra bucks. A much cheaper player will meet all my needs, so I have no interest in an ipod, and won't until the price is much lower than it is now. And they get the battery situation worked out :-)
Actually, though, I really prefer players with no moving parts. I don't need 4 gig of storage on a player; a large CF more than meets my needs, and doesn't have the one fatal problem of anything that goes around: someday it will stop going around.
Supply and demand may allow for a $70 price (or not; time will tell if Belkin is at the wrong price point or not), but even that doesn't mean it's not steep. Anytime demand outstrips supply, that allows suppliers to reap windfall profits. Belkin might currently be the only people offering one of these. If six months from now ten other companies are making such a product, you'll see them selling for half what Belkin is currently asking, and still making a profit.
Therefore, yes I do think that 70 bucks is really steep for one of those and would either wait or try building my own rather than spend that much.