5V Passthrough, with a kick...

[kirk]

One problem with 5V Passthroughs is that if your supply isn't up to it, either you get a voltage drop, or you roast your supply (very expensive if you blow out a port on your computer!).

Anyway, when we vape, we don't need tons of watts all the time... Just when we are inhaling.

So anyway, I made this 5V Passthrough. Its neat because that's a 2.0 Ohm cartomizer on it, and it never chews thru more than 400ma...

The trick is a minature 2.5 Farad 5 volt super capacitor. There is a couple watt resister inline with the USB to the super capacitor that slows charging to 400ma, but the super capacitor is direct wired to the connector, so when you are pressing the button, you get the full 10W direct to your lungs!

Pretty impressive. But, at that resistance, the hit only lasts a few seconds. But, at a lower resistance, or with more super capacitors in parallel, the possibilities are endless.





Anyway, another thing they are cool for is eliminating the need for IMR type batteries...

Because you can charge the super capacitor slower, reducing the peak current draw and in effect expensing it over time, regular lithium ion batteries don't freak out and last as long as they are supposed to (a long time), even if you use LR atomizers.

This particular model of cap has a life expectancy of 500000 cycles, and is pretty cheap. It also produces a burst of upto 20 watts (5V @ 4A, that is a *lot*).

The box and switch were from mad vapes, the super cap is from DigiKey. Cable and resistor were scrounged. Get a lot of them, they are cheaper that way.

My first mod. Yay! And, it's Tiny!

 

[JonnyVapΣ]

That's pretty cool. I've built a few 5v passthroughs so far and haven't thought of using a cap like that. But, I only use my passthroughs on self powered USB hubs or power supplies near 2A.

 

[purple puppy]

I have a 5V retractable passthrough, it works well with my computer.

 

[Shaman]

Sounds a like a slugging capacitor on a high speed photographic printer (analog). Like you said you only need that punch for a very short time compared to the devices total up time, it's how we can throw a relatively heavy filter flag at extreme speed, lock it magnetically for exposure, then slug it out of the way again just using a 5VDC circuit. Great thinking though, wonder why I haven't heard anyone talk about it before. BTW, the cans we use on these printers are about the size of a box of salt and would kill you if you were foolish enough to short the legs together.