Last winter I experienced some problems with my car battery. I knew that it was about time to replace it so off I went to buy a new one. This fact reminded me of an old article about a car battery/charging system diagnostics kit I had seen in one of those 1980s electronics magazines. That […]
Troubleshoot your car battery with ATtiny Continue Reading
I needed a couple of AA batteries and found the display at the supermarket where they were all arrayed. Normally when I’m shopping in the supermarket, I tend to look at the price/kg or price/l when comparing similar products. In the case of the batteries, there was no such indicator. Fine, I thought, I’ll work
Measuring Battery Capacity With an Arduino Continue Reading
One of the most fun and useful projects on instructables is to create your very own solar USB/ iPhone charger. They’re not overly difficult to make, nor are the parts overly expensive or hard to find. For the most part they do a rather good job of charging up small gadgets. Mostly. The big flaw
Lithium Battery Solar USB – iPhone – Arduino Charger Continue Reading
Rather than use the USB to power my Arduino board with a handy trip to the electronics store with some more knowledgeable people than I, I have constructed a 9Volt DC power supply. Taking a 9 volt battery, a 9v battery holder and a 2.1mm coaxial DC jack (positive tip) I have quickly soldered a
Making a 9v Battery DC power supply Continue Reading
When I’m building Solar Shrubs and other solar-powered creations, I often scavenge cells from various off-the-shelf devices such as solar garden or security lights. But these cells are rarely labeled as to their voltage, current, and power output. So it’s off to my bread-boarding station. First, I put each cell under a lamp and connect it to my multimeter to get
Arduino Solar Cell Tester Continue Reading
This is super simple but very useful if you are in a hurry or just like to do things yourself and on the off chance you didn’t know, this is about the easiest way to add mobile power to your Arduino. After looking at a number of battery power solutions for Arduino ranging from Lithium
9 Volt battery adapter for Arduino Continue Reading
If you’ve ever wanted to power your Arduino or AVR from a battery for development testing (batteries have different power delivery qualities than, say, transformed AC or even a regulated wall wart in DC) testing but were tired of going through batteries (Hey, I admit I’ve sucked batteries dry in hours because of a slipped-up
Power your Arduino with a Hand-Cranked Battery Continue Reading
Overview The Arduino Fio is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P (datasheet) runs at 3.3V and 8 MHz. It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 8 analog inputs, an on-board resonator, a reset button, and holes for mounting pin headers. It has connections for a Lithium
Arduino FIO Tutorial Continue Reading
As many of you may know, this Lazy Old Geek loves Arduinos. Many of my projects are portable and need a battery source: http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Pedometer/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Nokia-LCD-Sensors/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultrasonic-Tape-Measure/ All pricing was determined about early 2012. So, I’ve been using Adafruit 6 AA Battery holder $5.00 https://www.adafruit.com/products/248 with 6 AA rechargeable batteries. (See Picture) Another choice would
Arduino Battery Continue Reading
