Just a little project I hacked together in 30 minutes on a whim today, since I had a bunch of mod parts, but no desire to fiddle with the tricky business of actually making said "real" mod.
Bare Battery Packs
This first image is the assembled mod. Only five parts were needed: 2 4xAA battery holders from Radio Shack, and 2 9V battery clips from Radio Shack. The final piece is a USB female connector I cannibalized from a PS2-USB adaptor I found lying around.
It's necessary to know three things before throwing this together. First, you need to know the pinouts for USB - the outer two pins carry the power, while the inner two are for data. I left the middle two pins out entirely when I hooked the thing back up.
Second, you need to notice that the batteries are in parallel. This means that when you put the mod together, you tie the two red leads together and the two black leads together.
Third is just a note from experience. I had to pull the USB connector entirely apart, remove the pins, solder them, and put them back in. Make sure you bend the pins sufficiently that they make a connection. If not, hate and discontent and annoyance will ensue.
Packaged Battery Packs
This second image is the "packaging". My eventual plan is to use a neoprene camera case (since it's roomier) to put it in, but I just happened to have this lying around and it shows the general concept.
It's not entirely finished, since I need to heat-shrink the wires together, but it shows the general concept well.
If I had to do this again, I'd use a store-bought USB extension cable and chop the end off it. This is better-looking, sturdier, and probably easier to deal with since you don't need to screw with the individual pins.
As far as what powers it, I'm using 8 AA rechargables. This gives me 5000mAh worth of power, which should be enough to handle even the heaviest vaping for a couple of days. The reason for having two battery packs is because of the drain on each one - assuming 2.5A of drain from a LR carto (2 ohm) at 5V, this is exactly .5C drain on the entire system. This is well within tolerances for the rechargable AAs I use (NiMH from Energizer.)
In theory, one could also decide to use only one battery pack, which would give you half the vaping time and double the drain to 1C. I considered this undesirable for two reasons - first, the more drain on a battery, the less time it lasts. The vaping time is probably less than half if you only use a single pack. Second, 1C is towards the upper range of drain for the batteries - again, both a safety and longevity issue.
Tested fresh, the battery packs were showing 5.6V each. After 2 hours of vaping, they were showing 5.3V. They should level off around 5V even, and due to the nature of alkaline batteries, you should know when the batteries are dead.
Needless to say, you'll need a "real" passthrough to use this, since it's nothing but a USB connector. The one I have handled the extra little bit of voltage admirably, but as with everything, YMMV.
Bare Battery Packs
This first image is the assembled mod. Only five parts were needed: 2 4xAA battery holders from Radio Shack, and 2 9V battery clips from Radio Shack. The final piece is a USB female connector I cannibalized from a PS2-USB adaptor I found lying around.
It's necessary to know three things before throwing this together. First, you need to know the pinouts for USB - the outer two pins carry the power, while the inner two are for data. I left the middle two pins out entirely when I hooked the thing back up.
Second, you need to notice that the batteries are in parallel. This means that when you put the mod together, you tie the two red leads together and the two black leads together.
Third is just a note from experience. I had to pull the USB connector entirely apart, remove the pins, solder them, and put them back in. Make sure you bend the pins sufficiently that they make a connection. If not, hate and discontent and annoyance will ensue.
Packaged Battery Packs
This second image is the "packaging". My eventual plan is to use a neoprene camera case (since it's roomier) to put it in, but I just happened to have this lying around and it shows the general concept.
It's not entirely finished, since I need to heat-shrink the wires together, but it shows the general concept well.If I had to do this again, I'd use a store-bought USB extension cable and chop the end off it. This is better-looking, sturdier, and probably easier to deal with since you don't need to screw with the individual pins.
As far as what powers it, I'm using 8 AA rechargables. This gives me 5000mAh worth of power, which should be enough to handle even the heaviest vaping for a couple of days. The reason for having two battery packs is because of the drain on each one - assuming 2.5A of drain from a LR carto (2 ohm) at 5V, this is exactly .5C drain on the entire system. This is well within tolerances for the rechargable AAs I use (NiMH from Energizer.)
In theory, one could also decide to use only one battery pack, which would give you half the vaping time and double the drain to 1C. I considered this undesirable for two reasons - first, the more drain on a battery, the less time it lasts. The vaping time is probably less than half if you only use a single pack. Second, 1C is towards the upper range of drain for the batteries - again, both a safety and longevity issue.
Tested fresh, the battery packs were showing 5.6V each. After 2 hours of vaping, they were showing 5.3V. They should level off around 5V even, and due to the nature of alkaline batteries, you should know when the batteries are dead.
Needless to say, you'll need a "real" passthrough to use this, since it's nothing but a USB connector. The one I have handled the extra little bit of voltage admirably, but as with everything, YMMV.
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