{"id":46,"date":"2011-02-19T15:19:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T15:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/19\/the-best-blog\/"},"modified":"2011-02-19T15:19:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-19T15:19:00","slug":"best-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/best-blog.html","title":{"rendered":"The best blog:"},"content":{"rendered":"
No, not this one. The Art of Manliness gave me this idea:<\/div>\n

22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead of any of those ideas, however, I decided to build a voltage regulator inside one of the smaller tins, so I could charge my phone (a Motorola Droid 2) or any other device that can charge from USB, from a car, without having to spend money on a car charger (the one Verizon sells “specifically for the Droid” is $25).<\/p>\n

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I started out with the classic breadboard, to make sure that the voltage regulator would actually power the phone. I bought three from Radioshack at $1 each, with the idea that I would have less problems with heat dissipation if I could somehow parallel the outputs of the regulators. Short answer: in a parallel configuration, regulators will sort of try to regulate each other, and when I came back after five minutes the voltage had dropped from 5.1V to 2.5V and I had almost let the blue smoke out of all of them. So I just went with a single regulator. It is rated for 1.5A continuous output and has built-in thermal protection so I decided I was safe. <\/div>\n
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Once the prototyping was complete, I cut a hole in each side of the Altoids tin and started soldering everything together. The KEY lesson is here: in order for a USB port that is NOT connected to a computer to charge a device, the data pins of the device must be shorted. I learned this after a lot of fussing, but just ended up soldering the green and white wire together and protecting them with a piece of electrical tape and heat shrink. <\/div>\n
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Once all the other connections were made (+12V to input, output to red wire on USB port, with the grounds for the regulator, input, and output tied together at the wire nut) I soldered the regulator’s heat sink to the tin itself, thinking this would help with heat dissipation. So far this has worked out well but the tin has a tendency to get rather warm when the device is operating. Then I covered most everything in Gorilla super glue. And the finished product…<\/div>\n
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It works pretty well charging my Droid and my roommate’s iPhone. Any way, here’s an awesome picture, just for fun:<\/div>\n
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Don’t mess with the TI-83!<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not this one. The Art of Manliness gave me this idea: 22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin Instead of any of those ideas, however, I decided to build a voltage regulator inside one of the smaller tins, so I could charge my phone (a Motorola Droid 2) or any other device that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The best blog:”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cockfieldofdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}