PDA Battery charger/extender

While listening to my new xm radio, I found myself bored yet again. My pda’s batteries were low and I didn’t feel like going to get the charger for it. Made me think “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if I had bought one of those battery extenders for my pda?” Knowing they cost like $10 online I knew I could do it cheaper. Off to radio shack. I picked up a slick battery holder and a plug that would fit my pda (Toshiba E750).

The battery holder was enclosed, held 4 AA’s and had a on off switch for under 2 dollars.


The connector was a coax style dc power plug


The pda charger produced 5 volts dc. Now I know your thinking “Hey aa’s are 1.5 so your going to overdrive it and burn it out!”. That’s unlikely but possible, however I wasn’t going to use regular alkaline AA’s. I had some nice 2500mah NIMH AA’s. These put out 1.2 volts so, 4 x 1.2 = 4.8. Well within the range. No damage to my pda.

So all I did was solder the wires to the connector charge my AA’s, insert them into the case, plug it into my pda and hit the power switch. The charging light came on, Success!

So far I have noticed it being able to charge my e750 about 3 times per battery recharge. It will also run off the AA’s before tapping the internal battery so bonus in runtime. Now I coulda gone real ghetto and used a bare battery holder, but when the parts are this cheap why bother. Maybe I’ll even use heat shrink on the wires to make it look cleaner but that’s just cosmetic and I don’t care all that much.