DIY battery charger - need it tonight!

[hagbard79]

I always hate making my first post a call for help, but I have to in this instance or face the wrath of judgmental family who would simply die in shame if they smelled an analog on me.

I have an eGo and lost the charger. I'm a serious DIY electronics type and would be perfectly comfortable tearing apart one of my old cartomizers, feeding it the correct voltage and using it as a makeshift charger, but I'm not comfortable doing this until I get some details on the eGo battery.

I purchased it from Liberty Flights and it's listed as 650mAh there. I can't determine if it's li-ion, li-poly or NIMH, though I'm doubting NIMH.

I have plenty of USB cables. I have a few dead cartomizers I can cut up (to get the needed threads) and if necessary, I have a LI* charger that I was GOING to use for a different project, but that can stand in for a few days until I can get back.

Here is the LI* charger:
USB LiIon/LiPoly charger [v1.1] ID: 259 - $10.00 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

Does anyone know the amp output of the standard Joye eGo charger? I can put 200ma to 1000ma out of this board. If the basic eGo charger doesn't even have LI* smart circuitry in it and is just a USB cable ending in a custom connector, I can just wire up the +4.x / gnd to the appropriate portions of the barrel, though since rechargable batteries can be STRANGE on how you charge them, I would want to know which part is + and which is gnd.

Anyone want to help me take a stab at this in the next 8 hours?

 

[hagbard79]

Looking further, it seems unlikely that there would be a light 3.7v 650mAh battery in this thing. It's got to be LI*. So that means I can at the least use my LI* charger circuit. I just need someone to check their EGO charger and tell me what the polarity of the contacts are when it's charging.

The big fear i have is that Joye has put a tamper circuit in here that mates with a circuit in the eGo preventing me from doing this but frankly usually only complete .......s like Apple do that (google Mintyboost)

 

[mlinky]

Here are some useful threads:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/battery-mods/80241-ego-batterty-2.html
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...149955-ego-650-mah-manual-battery-inside.html

 

[AttyPops]

Might be better to make a passthrough if you have a 5v usb that puts out 2.0 amps. See the modder's section. Don't blow up batteries charging them incorrectly!

Run and get a charging usb hub and an extra usb cable if you need one. Also, a 3.0 amp button would be good, along with a housing of some kind (like a 1xAA box). LED/resistor optional.

The only thing you need after that is a 510 connector (assuming 510). This can be gained from an old battery. Also the modder's section has alternative connectors (like RCA) in a pinch. Should save your .....

I take donations for this kind of save-.... advice....... (JK... that's what ECF is for!).

Also, another alternative is to make a nico-stick. Uses standard Li* batteries @ 3.7 volts. You'd want a 2xAA box, button, and connector. Wires/glue/solder assumed. LED/resistor optional. Again, modder's section.

Good Luck!

 

[mlinky]

Might be better to make a passthrough if you have a 5v usb that puts out 2.0 amps. See the modder's section. Don't blow up batteries charging them incorrectly!

Run and get a charging usb hub and an extra usb cable if you need one. Also, a 3.0 amp button would be good, along with a housing of some kind (like a 1xAA box). LED/resistor optional.

The only thing you need after that is a 510 connector (assuming 510). This can be gained from an old battery. Also the modder's section has alternative connectors (like RCA) in a pinch. Should save your .....

I take donations for this kind of save-.... advice....... (JK... that's what ECF is for!).

Also, another alternative is to make a nico-stick. Uses standard Li* batteries @ 3.7 volts. You'd want a 2xAA box, button, and connector. Wires/glue/solder assumed. LED/resistor optional. Again, modder's section.

Good Luck!

If I could give a post a 5 star rating, this would get it.

 

[TeeFour]

My eGo charger:
Input: 5V, 500mA
Output: 4.2V, 420mA

good luck!

 

[hagbard79]

All done

I took a friend's old broken 510 wall chargers (2), modded my charging circuit to push 2000mA (yay spare mosfets) and ended up with a combination charger / passthrough. It's ugly but it's 45 minutes work! I'll sex it up another time. Thanks for the helpful links, folks!

 

[Java_Az]

I sure hope your not going to charge eGo batteries @ 2000 mA. That wouldnt be good. I think i smell smoke. Some 18650 batteries could handle a 2000 mA charge rate pretty much anything smaller and your pushing your luck. IMR's would be a exception. Anyways not sure what you got going on a passthrough is no problem @ 2000 mA but charging batteries is a whole different story. A general rule for li ion batteries is maximum charge rate is 1xC C is capacity so a ego 650mah maximum charge rate would be 650mA. Maximum charge rate will decrease the life of the battery thats why a 420mA is used to maximize the longevity of the battery. I might be reading your post wrong but when you say

modded my charging circuit to push 2000mA

i take it as the charging circuit is putting out 2000mA which brings up safety concerns.

Edit: pretty hard to beat the price of these 420mA chargers at madvapes. I do realize you want to DIY but there really is not much you can do to make charging eGo's better. Pushing them to 650mA is going to shorten the life of them. Charging them higher then 650mA and your risking them starting a fire. http://www.madvapes.com/510-420ma-charger_p_2488.html at that price get two in case you lose another one.

 

[hagbard79]

Looking back I realize I was absurdly short in my reply. What happened is that I posted this nice long explanation as to WHY I needed to DIY, wrote out my whole post then my browser crashed. My second version doesn't make it clear.

I lost my charger yesterday and immediately ordered a few more - realizing that only having one was silly anyhow. Tomorrow morning, I start a 7 hour drive to California where I will see my very judgmental family who would freak out if they smelled smoke on my clothes. In Las Vegas (seemingly) there are no places I can go find eGo chargers in stock, so I needed to make something happen faster than the speed of FedEX.

The circuit I made essentially chucks 2000mA at ONE of the two broken charger couplers I got and can be used as a passthrough. The other get (right about this second) 485mA and is charging pretty well as best I can tell. It will do both at once with no problem. I'm actually using a lovely little power supply from The σ11 Regulated Power Supply that I had laying around. It's lovely to use a $150 PSU to charge a $21 battery. Of course if I even USE this after my real units get here, I'll hook it up to some wall wart that will give the passthrough 1.5A-2A and skip the charger.

Anyhow - sorry for alarming you - that would have been pretty nasty had I actually been doing what it sounded like I was doing.

 

[Java_Az]

Ok cool . I will put away the fire extinguisher away. I figured there was a good chance your post might not have been describing it accurately. I do the same thing sometimes i will type something out and then read it later and say what the hell was i typen. Sounds like a cool circuit i hope it gets you threw the family get together .

 

[Traver]

Doesn't the Joye Ego have a usb port on the back? Mine does. If it does you can get a wall or car adapter and a usb cable almost any place that sells phones or electronic.

 

[Java_Az]

Not all eGo's have the USB port on them. Really those PT style eGo's haven't been around too long 4 or 5 month ago is when the first ones hit the market.

 

[AttyPops]

Browser crashes too. Man. Sounds like a real bad day.... hope today is better.