Hello ladies and gents,
My quick background. Have always been a bit of a tinkerer. Mostly in automotive repair and other mechanically-driven hobbies (like firearms - which explains my username). Used to take my electronic toys apart when I was a kid, but lacked parents who would enable any learning on that front in the form of books, kits, etc. Unfortunately got stuck with a string of blow-hards for science teachers throughout grade-school, and never made it to college - so little to no learning there either. That said, I've always retained interest in electronics.
Anyway, a little storm blew my way two days ago and left me without power for about 22 hours and although I had a fully charged cell phone when the power went out, it was almost dead 15 hours later when I stuck it on the car charger and that was from simply coordinating with bosses/underlings and reading work emails.
At work yesterday, I tried to find a portable USB-based charging device that would charge cell phones off of regular off-the-shelf batteries (which I have plenty of and have great shelf-life), and upon finding there weren't many good off-the-shelf solutions - have opted to finally take the plunge and build my own.
I mean seriously, why pay $40 off-the-shelf or $20 for a pre-made kit when I can spend $150 on parts and multimeters and get the experience of destroying all of my parts and likely my iPhone as well
Anyway, I'm a total noob at all of this save for some small soldering I've done, poorly, in the past. Main parts for this project are already ordered from Mouser (along with some cool USB female panel-mount connectors from L-Com) and I'll be doing quite a bit of light-reading from the Tutorials section in the upcoming weeks. But wanted to introduce myself and say hello.
Hello.
--Billy
My quick background. Have always been a bit of a tinkerer. Mostly in automotive repair and other mechanically-driven hobbies (like firearms - which explains my username). Used to take my electronic toys apart when I was a kid, but lacked parents who would enable any learning on that front in the form of books, kits, etc. Unfortunately got stuck with a string of blow-hards for science teachers throughout grade-school, and never made it to college - so little to no learning there either. That said, I've always retained interest in electronics.
Anyway, a little storm blew my way two days ago and left me without power for about 22 hours and although I had a fully charged cell phone when the power went out, it was almost dead 15 hours later when I stuck it on the car charger and that was from simply coordinating with bosses/underlings and reading work emails.
At work yesterday, I tried to find a portable USB-based charging device that would charge cell phones off of regular off-the-shelf batteries (which I have plenty of and have great shelf-life), and upon finding there weren't many good off-the-shelf solutions - have opted to finally take the plunge and build my own.
I mean seriously, why pay $40 off-the-shelf or $20 for a pre-made kit when I can spend $150 on parts and multimeters and get the experience of destroying all of my parts and likely my iPhone as well
Anyway, I'm a total noob at all of this save for some small soldering I've done, poorly, in the past. Main parts for this project are already ordered from Mouser (along with some cool USB female panel-mount connectors from L-Com) and I'll be doing quite a bit of light-reading from the Tutorials section in the upcoming weeks. But wanted to introduce myself and say hello.
Hello.
--Billy