Not a clue, but I have two of them, so hopefully at least one will be good. Not sure if I'll be able to do it tonight or not, but this is my next mod, without a doubt.
best 5v mini usb pass through
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Hmm....it's not looking good with the new battery. The LED comes on when I plug in the USB cable, but it's so dim you can barely tell. I'm too tired to troubleshoot it tonight, so I'll let it charge until morning and see if the situation changes.
Man, I must have been VERY tired last night -- the problem was that I just plain didn't solder one of the wires! It's somewhat frightening to think that I had a hot soldering iron in my hands while in that state. I touched the wire to to where it should be soldered, and the charging light came right on. I'll give it a full charge, and report back on how that worked out.
Any news on if this is going to work? I managed to find and old 600mA Li-Ion battery that I want to try but decided to wait and hear your experience.
It works! I decided that I wanted 3.7v, instead of whatever upconversion happens in the chip, so as to get longer battery life. So instead of connecting to the USB connection, I just connected directly to the battery, and it works just fine. I like to keep the mods as small as possible, but because of the battery, I had to go with an oversized 3xAA box that I picked up at Big Lots (the battery holder for a string of LED Christmas lights). It's about the largest unit that I'd be comfortable using. We'll see if the off-USB battery life is good enough to justify it. Here's a shot of it next to some other mods for comparison (from left, 2xAAA nicostick, 2xAA Lenmar mod, 3xAA Digipower mod):
So, like I said, pretty bulky. Here's a shot of the internals:
As you can see, I haven't glued anything in place yet. Still want to try it out for a while before I lock everything down. Also, there's a few problems with it, two of which I can fix, one of which is just a limitation of the format. First, I forgot to hook the killswitch back in when I assembled it, so I'll have to go back and put that in. Second, I'm going to put in a button on the side so that the flashlight is useable. Third, I wasn't able to get the charging connector at the bottom where I wanted it, so I'll just have to live with it on the side.
So, like I said, pretty bulky. Here's a shot of the internals:
As you can see, I haven't glued anything in place yet. Still want to try it out for a while before I lock everything down. Also, there's a few problems with it, two of which I can fix, one of which is just a limitation of the format. First, I forgot to hook the killswitch back in when I assembled it, so I'll have to go back and put that in. Second, I'm going to put in a button on the side so that the flashlight is useable. Third, I wasn't able to get the charging connector at the bottom where I wanted it, so I'll just have to live with it on the side.
Excellent job boondoggle-looks like it'll work great, possibly in a smaller box even (got a pile of old cell batteries also, lol). My original unit seems to be working well-vaped all day on it yesterday (not constant, but fairly regularly) and didn't run it dead. Haven't had a chance to try a 501 atty on it since I moved the wire straight to the batt, and I used a 901 connector this time since the 501 didn't work when I tried it boosted. (granted, my 501 attys are a few weeks old and may have a higher resistance than the factory ones).
Also-a word of caution-when I was putting mine together I accidently shorted something with my screwdriver-now the white LED won't work, lol-so much for my vaper/flashlight mod. I do like where this thread is heading though-keep it up everyone!
Btw boon-if you could maybe do a schematic it'd be helpful for anyone else that wants to try this.
Also-a word of caution-when I was putting mine together I accidently shorted something with my screwdriver-now the white LED won't work, lol-so much for my vaper/flashlight mod. I do like where this thread is heading though-keep it up everyone!
Btw boon-if you could maybe do a schematic it'd be helpful for anyone else that wants to try this.
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Hmm...ran into a potential problem. The charging light never went out, after a full night of charging. Does the blue light normally turn off entirely, or just drop to a dimmer setting? I'm just wondering if the charging circuit is able to recognize the much larger battery.
As to a schematic, I've never done one before, but I don't think it should be too hard. I'll see if I can get to it this weekend.
As to a schematic, I've never done one before, but I don't think it should be too hard. I'll see if I can get to it this weekend.
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Well, at least on mine, when the original battery is charged it dims to a VERY low level (barely visible, but still there). Hope that helps. Btw, did you test the larger battery to see where it was as far as voltage? Other possibility may be it was bad/old to begin with.
As for schematics-I've seen some pretty simple ones around-actually the photo you took is pretty good imo-maybe just detail what wires you attached to where would probably be enough for most people to figure it out.
As for schematics-I've seen some pretty simple ones around-actually the photo you took is pretty good imo-maybe just detail what wires you attached to where would probably be enough for most people to figure it out.
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That does help, actually. It seemed to be dimmer, but it's hard to tell, because the way I have it hooked up, only the reflection of the internal LED is visible as it gets caught in the external flashlight LED. Hopefully, that makes sense -- basically, I'm using the white flashlight LED as a window for the blue charging LED to pass through the case. This means it's much harder to judge brightness.
I'm limping along with a crappy old analog voltmeter I had lying around. It's pretty much only good as a continuity tester, since it doesn't have the low ranges to measure the voltages I'm working with in mods. Specs on the battery are that it's 3.7v with 1300mAh. There's a bit of confusion as to whether it's li-po or li-ion, but it sure looks like a li-po to me.
As far as the mod goes, I've made the fixes I mentioned earlier. The kill switch is in place and functioning properly. The flashlight works, but since I connected the kill switch directly to the battery, it also cuts off the flashlight. Not sure if that's good or not, but I'm not going back in there just to change it around at this point.
Here's a shot of the mod, showing the top button for the atomizer, and the side button for the flashlight:
Here's a side view, showing the flashlight LED and the USB port:
And finally, here's a shot of the finished internals:
Nice job, looks good. So the verdict-is it charging???? Hope so.
Took me a bit to get what you were saying about judging the charging LED brightness, but I think I figured it out, lol. Damn-I hope this works for you.
Took me a bit to get what you were saying about judging the charging LED brightness, but I think I figured it out, lol. Damn-I hope this works for you.
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Okay, so it got me through moderate use all day yesterday with no sign of dropping off. I gave it another overnight charge, and this time the charging light did go out, so I guess it's just a matter of a very slow charging rate combined with a large battery...the initial overnight charge just wasn't enough. Now that I know the charging works, but is just slow, I'm going to see how long the battery lasts. I'm guessing a day of heavy use, or a couple of days with moderate use.
Yeah, I'm going to bet the charge chip in this thing is limiting the current to the battery to 100mA. That would explain the slow charge rate.
That was my thinking as well. At least the slow charge is good for battery longevity.
As an update, I went 33 hours before needing to recharge, and I'm about a 2ml a day guy, so that battery should get you through about 3ml.
Next time I use the Digipower, I'm going to keep the stock battery, and see if I can fit it in a 2xAAA box with a nice switch, and USB passthrough.
Next time I use the Digipower, I'm going to keep the stock battery, and see if I can fit it in a 2xAAA box with a nice switch, and USB passthrough.
OMFG I just ruined two of them trying to get that stupid usb port off. How did you do it. Thats almost $30.00 down the drain.
No fear gratefulme. I did the same thing on my first one. I ripped the trace off the board. All you have to do is solder it directly to the battery leads that are soldered to the board and wah lah...it works.
Well, they're not ruined. In my mod, I didn't even use the USB port...I just soldered the battery to the bottom of the board where the stock battery goes, and then back out from those points to the switch/atomizer/etc. So you could still use them for that.
On the one I'm working with now, I wanted to see if the output voltage is different from the USB connection, so I just took a pair of pliers and peeled of the outer metal, and it seemed to work just fine. Even if you completely snapped the USB connection off, you should still be able to solder a wire directly to the leads on the board.
If you're going straight to the battery and need to remove the male USB for space, just clip the connector on the side where it's soldered to the board if you have clippers small enough. You can gently slide that off then separate the insides after it's off. Once those are off, it's fairly easy to desolder the leftover pins.
I might have screwed this one while soldering on the wires though. I hooked up an old cell phone battery we had at work. I might have shorted something at some point, once I disconnect the usb my voltage drops way too fast. I'll try it again tomorrow with the original battery.
I screwed something up in my skull pipe last week, the board drained the battery down till it was empty. I noticed it was warm so I cracked it open to cut the switches free, but that didn't help.
I might have screwed this one while soldering on the wires though. I hooked up an old cell phone battery we had at work. I might have shorted something at some point, once I disconnect the usb my voltage drops way too fast. I'll try it again tomorrow with the original battery.
I screwed something up in my skull pipe last week, the board drained the battery down till it was empty. I noticed it was warm so I cracked it open to cut the switches free, but that didn't help.
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