Wednesday, March 26, 2008

AA Experiment

Now, you all know me. You've all seen me take something and keep at it till it's done.

Be this building something, making something...trying something. And you all know that I can't let go.

In this case, it's building a battery.

My laptop was second hand and dead when I acquired it, and while I've fixed most of it the one thing I can't do anything about is the battery.

Cracks can be glued and held together with plate steel - but a lithium ion battery is another problem. For those that don't know, in ideal conditions a lithium battery decays over time. In use or not, charged or not it still decays.

Stored properly, half charged in a freezer they can last a few years. Constantly charge/discharging in a laptop? At more then ideal, constantly changing temperatures? With trickle charging?

The battery now lasts minutes - maybe 5 on a good day. If I'm running warcraft I don't have enough time to log in.

And I'm sick on it.

So I'm planning on building a battery for the laptop - a one use power pack - with AA batteries.

This is possible because my power supply can take a DC power source in the range of 12-16(ish) volts - intended for use in a cars "12 volt" system. If it works with one use batteries, I can redesign to work with rechargeables...

But the plan. Ten AA batteries in series should provide 15 volts - well in the adapter range. Between them that's about 30 amp hours - because I believe the amp hour rating is cumulative over a battery pack.

So given that the original battery was 11v, 5.8 amp hours and rated at 2 hours that should give me 5 times the capacity. Which is of course laughable. And clearly wrong.

It doesn't take into the account it has to run through a DC rectifier.

But my question to you lot is...how long do you think it'll last? Do you think it'll even boot....?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahaha, just plug it in, saves trouble, money and space.

Anonymous said...

Bored now with this conversation.

Anonymous said...

I'm gonna keep an eye out my window for a cloud of smoke rising over your place :P

Why you just cant buy a new battery is just beyond me!

Anonymous said...

He saysits too expensive, plus he just bought a new power supply at like 120$ canadian.. PLUG IT IN MARTIN !!

I know its just too logic for you you have to go beyond that but come on.. it will still be a hassle to carrye the thing around.

Anonymous said...

Don't listen to da haters Martin! You can rebuild it! You can make it Better! Stronger! FASTER!

Anonymous said...

any updates its has been almost 5 days, thought you were making it ... Thursday?