DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and supply

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I have had some time to put this battery pack together today and I am about half way done with tabbing the battery cells together

About 2 years ago I bought some battery power banks that were made with the lighting cable built in but the battery is only a 5 amp hour pouch battery cell and drain very quickly if your phone or tablet is down to 20% of charge left

So I figured out how to put a longer lighting cable on it and put it on a battery power bank that I made for some other phones and tablets that do not have the lighting cable built in and the running time was a lot better but it still runs down the battery pack quickly but what I am building is a 1S27P battery pack and let's see how fast this one down the the battery pack

I will post some pictures when I have it together maybe tomorrow sometime

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

It is made with one of these battery packs with the case which at one time they sold it that way

https://batteryhookup.com/products/2...cents-per-cell

Well I am finished with the tabbing and reconfigure the battery pack cells and have it in the case and charging it but it is going to many hours to charge because the battery cells was at 3.85 volt when I started and the last light on the battery bank controller showing that it is 75% charged which is not the case it is probably more like 30% charged when I started charging this battery pack it was pushing 1.75 amp from the charger now it is down to 1.58 amps so it will be awhile before it is finished charging

The one that I tested this concept with this battery bank pack controller I was only using 1S13P and it ran for 24 hours but the iPad was at 30% charged which is not bad for second hand batteries

Now if I started with the tablet full charged then it would probably run for several days continuously with the way I use this tablet

I did a rough estimate of how many amp hours this battery bank pack is some where around 50 to 75 amp hours depending on which battery bank that I used I did not note what the results were because I knew that I was going to reconfigure it anyway but I do know that it tested good because I left the charging wires on it

Because I had several of these battery packs had bad cells in them which I still have to take apart and tested them to weed out the cells that are heaters I have to finish testing the ones that I have been working on to back to using the SkyRc IMAX b6 battery tester to test them with

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

This is the battery spot welder that I used on this project it is also from this EBay seller

https://www.ebay.com/itm/31338813135...53.m2749.l2649

I used a battery operated battery spot welder that has two pouch battery cell ( high amp output type if I remember correctly it has two 5 amp hour battery cell )

Which I was very impressed with I welded all 27 batteries in this battery pack multiple time on each tab to have a good connection

Now the only issue that I had is if you do too many welds in short period of time it has a tendency to lockup and do nothing at all had to do power it down and power it back on and was able to continue to weld ( I had to do this several times before I figure out how quickly you can weld with it )

The welds were decent at level two on this welder

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well it wasn’t finished charging until late in the afternoon the next day before it was full changed according to changing controller board for this battery pack

The results are what I expected it to be now it time to test the running time with my usb testing device that uses the same computer software that is for the EBC A-10H battery testing machine that I have shown the test results for battery cell testing before

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well I have used this battery pack for charging one of my tablet and still has power to keep charging the tablet battery even with only one led light on the fuel gauge

Very impressed with the results of this battery pack with this battery charger made for this iPad

The first picture is battery pack enclosure and the last picture is the battery cells holder enclosure the second picture is of the battery charger controller board the way that it is before I modify it to work correctly in this battery pack case

I going to make several more of these battery packs with this enclosures that I have

Once the battery pack is completely discharged I will put on the usb battery tester that uses the same software that is used for the battery testing machine and I will post the results of these tests

One note these battery packs that have the lighting cable on it was sold at Walmart but are no longer available for sale as far as I know I have not seen them anymore but I bought a bunch of them when they were being clearance out but did not have a project in mind when I originally bought them

The output of this battery pack that has the lighting cable on it put out a little more than 2 amps which is unusual for battery pack to output this amperage to charge an iPad one nice thing about this charger controller is it only get slightly warm to the touch when putting out this amperage which is very nice

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

This pouch battery is not the best one that I seen but I think I have load testing one or two of them and they tested at around 4 amp hours if I remember correctly

But the biggest issue with some of these these batteries that they used in them is that they crystallized and become crunchy when you squeeze them a little bit and they have very little voltage to them when they get this way ( a good thing that I only paid $5.00 or less for them each when they were clearance out ) I have some better pouch battery that I thought about using but it will not fit in the battery pack enclosure correctly and so I can not use those batteries for this enclosure unless I ghettos it which would look like crap

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well this battery pack still has one LED light still on and has not died yet
Which when it does I have to put it on the battery tester and measure just how many amp hours this battery pack has

On another note I just found out that the battery tester that I have been using has a function that I really did not understand correctly how it works but I used this setting today and found out DCP is for if you want to measure the a contentious watt on the load

For example let say that you want to put a 5 watt load on your battery
Well at 4.2 volts it started at 1.20 amp but as the voltage goes down the current goes up as high as 1.660 amp

I might have to post this repair in the ghetto post on this forum but it works and I need a longer cable for the EBC-B20H tester that is so much longer than the other battery testing machines that I have and the cord was just as tight that is how it broke because I had to get to the back of the computer to change the wires less mouse that stopped working

So this battery pack has a little bit over 38.6 watt hours which I think is more accurate than when you use the DCC that I normally use for getting amp hours rating

Because most battery packs that are made for charging phones and tablets are rated by watt hours then amp hours

The battery in the picture is where the testing results came from this battery was made in Taiwan and was bought from Battery Hookup recently I just got around to testing one yesterday and today

I also bought some of same batteries that were made in China and the test results were very similar in amp hours so the quality seems to very similar

So from now on I going to run both tests when I want to know what the battery packs that I am building for charging phones and tablets can really do

On one more note I had an issue with the USB TTL controller the USB female connectors are shit they have no plastic backing so after you unplug then plug it in a few times it works when it wants to well I fix this issue as well

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well I have used this battery pack for charging one of my tablet and still has power to keep charging the tablet battery even with only one led light on the fuel gauge

Very impressed with the results of this battery pack with this battery charger made for this iPad

The first picture is battery pack enclosure and the last picture is the battery cells holder enclosure the second picture is of the battery charger controller board the way that it is before I modify it to work correctly in this battery pack case

I going to make several more of these battery packs with this enclosures that I have

Once the battery pack is completely discharged I will put on the usb battery tester that uses the same software that is used for the battery testing machine and I will post the results of these tests

Well I put the battery pack on usb battery tester and it still had 5.5something amp hours left with only one fuel gauge light on

Charging up the battery pack and it is up to 40 amp hours already but I not sure that it going to make it to 54 amp hours which would mean that each battery cell would have about 2.0 amp hours which would be great if it makes it to this value

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well I had some issues with this usb battery tester it has a tendency ( but it not predictable when this happens ) to time out and when you hit continue it sometimes it recalibrate the controller and error out ( but does not give you any error messages ) and you can not trust the data that you see

It was showing 48 amp hours but I not exactly sure that this was correct the graph was like it just continued but the hours were way off so I can not trust the results

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well I finally got some believe able data results and they are not as good I would like them to be

I did get 32 hours of running time with a one amp load which is not to bad I guess

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well I finally got some believe able data results and they are not as good I would like them to be

I did get 32 hours of running time with a one amp load which is not to bad I guess

I kind-a figure out what is happening when you are charging this battery pack with this charging controller when it first starts charging its at about 1.8 amps and the battery voltage must reach the controller’s voltage limit and shuts down after the battery sits for a little while then you can finish charging because then the amperage starts throwing down and finish’s charging completely

I have another charger controller that I am going to use on this battery pack
I am going to take this one that is in it now and pull it out the battery pack controller
charger that in it now and use brand new battery on it instead

[eccerr0r]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Still eeking out whatever life is left on the Li-Ion cells that I accidentally overdischarged. I charge with my solar panels with a repurposed printer power supply, and with another DC-DC converter I use it to charge my phone. Seems to still hold some energy but probably not much more than those "9000mAh" 18650 cells. They droop in voltage real fast unfortunately.

Really should re-cell my Atom laptop battery pack but couldn't figure out how to crack the plastic case without destroying it. Curious as to how the pack degraded so quickly, perhaps it too was overdischarged somehow, though I didn't acquire it new...

Batteries suck. Need to be able to make my own from raw materials...

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Really should re-cell my Atom laptop battery pack but couldn't figure out how to crack the plastic case without destroying it.

This is what I use to open plastic case with

Anvil
2-1/2 in. 4 Edge Scraper Blade (2-Pack) <— you can get this item from Home Depot
I have gone to DuckDuckGo so I will be limiting the direct website links in the future

This is the tool that I made with the scraper blade to open plastic case and it works very good the bar is a aluminum bar that I got from a machine shop that I know the owner which was left over from a customer order that was completely done with and was scrap the threads were made in the aluminum bar to hold the the scraper blade to the bar

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

I have found that if use the batteries in a tablet or phone or computer a lot they do not last very long for some reason you might be lucky if it lasts for two years

And it does not seem to matter weather or not you use only 20% to 80% of its capacity which to seem to be odd

What seems to matter is how many times you charge the batteries up not how much capacity you use each time this is my personal experience with this type of battery cells

[eccerr0r]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

I had one battery in a Nokia phone that lasted 10 years until it hit about 60% original capacity. I don't know if that was luck or Nokia got the battery treatment right.

That being said I have Asus devices that seem to abuse their batteries - that Asus laptop had its battery toasted, and I have an Asus phone that probably will kill its battery too.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well the battery for tools seems to only lasts about 2 years with me before I notice a drop in capacity and then think about replacing them because the run time just gets shorter and shorter before the charger refuses to charge anymore a lot of the time it is because one or more battery cells are bad or because the voltages are all over the place not worth trying to rebalancing them because most of the time it does not do any good or the BMS protection board take a shit I have several of them do this and I will replace it with a battery pack that still is good and the running time is still pretty good

There was a time that cell phone batteries lasted longer than they do today I am not sure exactly why this is unless the power demand is so much higher than it was back then

I have found some computer power supply over charge batteries and you know this is the case because the battery becomes very warm not hot but not far from it

The same thing happens to tool battery because those batteries get very warm when charging them

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

I kind-a figure out what is happening when you are charging this battery pack with this charging controller when it first starts charging its at about 1.8 amps and the battery voltage must reach the controller’s voltage limit and shuts down after the battery sits for a little while then you can finish charging because then the amperage starts throwing down and finish’s charging completely

I have another charger controller that I am going to use on this battery pack
I am going to take this one that is in it now and pull it out the battery pack controller
charger that in it now and use brand new battery on it instead

Well this charging controller is like most of them that I have tried to use on bigger battery cell count in a pack meaning this

I like using the charging controller for battery banks because they already have the usb connectors on it and it has the capability to know what amperage to put to the device hook up to it

I have tried some that I bought on EBay however I have not had very good luck with them working correctly for any length of time so I have given up doing it this way

If it has a wattage hour rating and you put a bigger battery in once the counter has reached the rating for this battery pack it just keeps the last fuel gauge light on until it is runs out of power

The reason I know this is I did a test where I ran the other battery tester on it and keep the charging controller on it and the battery voltage is at 3.67 which would make at about 50% remaining but all 4 fuel gauge lights are on it is not measuring the battery voltage it counting wattage that is going through it current sensor

One solution might be to put a switch on a certain amount of battery watt hours like let say you have 3 amp hour batteries and you put two batteries in parallel and this gives you 6 amp hours but you use 3 cells and yes it is going to a little more than what it is rated for but the fuel gauge might not be that far off and once it gets to only one fuel gauge light you switch to the next bank of battery cells and so on yeah this approach sucks I am not sure exactly what would work unless I just use an volt meter to use as a monitor battery life

Because the battery case that I am using has 27 battery cells in it which would mean that I would have 9 switches on it if I were to do it this way

This is crap to do it this way as far as I am concerned because when the battery age’s this counter is going to be useless for knowing what power is remaining

To me it would have made more sense to have it measure the voltage and when it gets to 3.2 volts then only have one fuel gauge light on

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: DIY IPhone and IPad battery power bank with batteries from Battery Hookup and sup

Well here is an update on this issue

I have been running a test on this charging controller and it turns out that it is shutting down after a certain amount of amp hours then reactived it continues to charge and when it racks up another 14.000 amp hour it shuts down again and has to be reset again this is before the battery voltage reaches 4.00 volts

So it looks like that the most this charging controller can do it has to be less than 14.000 amp hours to work correctly
Now I have design this battery pack to be within this limitation of this charging controller

This is the reason I have pointed out in another post that I am modify

[ this is to be able to monitor the amperage going into the battery under charge ]

( I can monitor the voltage right now with out modify the battery testing machine )

{ this to compare the amp hours of the boost converter and the charging controller effectively easily }

one of my battery testing machine to be able to see the limitations of charging controller that I plan on using in the future

One note on a comment that I made earlier about

“ The reason I know this is I did a test where I ran the other battery tester on it and keep the charging controller on it and the battery voltage is at 3.67 which would make at about 50% remaining but all 4 fuel gauge lights are on it is not measuring the battery voltage it counting wattage that is going through it current sensor ”

It turns out that if you put a load on the charging controller it then reacts to the voltage of the battery to recalibrate the fuel gauge results ( but this is crap that it is designed this way )