Webby's Laboratory: Recycling Laptop batteries

Webby's Laboratory: Recycling Laptop batteries: What to do with those old Li-ion cells out of a old laptop battery?? Maybe a flash light! Schedule 80 3/4 PVC is the perfe...

Recycling Laptop batteries

What to do with those old Li-ion cells out of a old laptop battery??

Maybe a flash light!












Schedule 80 3/4 PVC is the perfect size for these cells.

VERSION 0.1

It's pretty simple construction, I used a hole saw to cut a proto board in to a nice circle and soldered on some super bright LED's.

Put a loop of wire on the bottom for the positive contact,

which you really can't see that well in these pics. Drilled through the cap and put a spring in it to make the negative connection. 

It's just help together with the interference fit on the PVC. It's my favourite so far, probably because of the size.

VERSION 0.2

I did a little more on the actual mounting of the LED's and the connection to the batteries.

Drilled holes in a washer and bolted the whole thing together.

Just Regular white LED's I did not have any super bright ones.

So I left this one on for 3 days!!! Still was working even though it was quite a bit dimmer, but let's not forget these are USED batteries that no longer worked in the laptop. Plus these are low power LED's so I know I won't see the same performance out of the other prototypes.

A notch in the top for the bolt in the head.

VERSION 0.3

The Illuminator

900 LM LED's This thing is BRIGHT!

This one has a switch in it.

A grove for the negative wire

 The Spring set up

One Bright Mofo

 

I need to work out a better switch, but this is what I had on hand. 

more to come

 

Proof of Concept MORE NIXIE TUBES!!!

Well small steps, Running a counter with the BCD chip. Sweet, next step to count with all 4 tubes, my programming skills will be seriously be tested.

Here is the video.

More Nixie Fun!!

Mounting tubes to a prototype board.

Mounting a RGB LED under each tube, that will be for effect lighting, more on that later.

I had to drill holes in the bases of the tube so the LED has a place to sit.

Oh man, all these wires its an octopus or a thirteenopus??

Well I'm beat tonight only got two in.

NIXIE TUBE!!!!!

USSR era vacuum display tubes + 180 volt DC home made power supply = the beginning of a really cool clock. The time circuit will be easy DS1307 RTC has occupied all my other clocks. The big issue is an array driver that can handle 180V.

Here is a few pics of the power supply

But here is a video of the real test

I'll have more posts on this as I move forward. Next step  hooking it to a PIC and counting up and down....

Multifunction LED MATRIX display!!

Finally got it to accept live data!!

My c skills are getting better!!

My Programmer

So here is my own version of a programmer, I can burn bootloaders and program the chip with it. The ZIF socket makes for easy removal and installation.