Zaurus Battery Pack
Proceed at your own risk. If you do decide to try this, I suggest that you test the battery pack with a multi meter for polarity before connecting it to the Zaurus. If your polarity is wrong, you will blow a fuse in the Zaurus and it will need to be serviced. I know, because I did this once already.
First Quick and Dirty Pack
This was my first pack. It was made with D cells running at 4500mah. I used an RC car charger, which would get me to full charger in about 3 hours. I kept the pack in a $3 game boy case. The pack held a lot of power, but was way too bulky.
I made this connector to charge the battery pack. The charger and this adapter will also be used with the pack created below.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!
You will be removing and replacing the adapters to charge these pack. Once you get the connections correct with the correct polarity using your multi-meter, mark both the connector and the adapter with line with a sliver paint marker as seen above.
Building a Better Pack
After some research, it seemed that a 4/3 A size battery would be the ideal size for a high capacity battery pack that I could mount to the Zaurus.
Parts for the new pack:
1 - Homemade wooden battery jig (1" X 2" wood with 1 1/2 finish nails used)
4 - Sanyo HR-4/3FAU 1.2 volt 4000mah batteries w/tabs (4/3 A size) (http://www.batterystation.com)
1ft - 105mm shrink tubing (cut 2 - 105mm X 105mm squares) (http://www.batterystation.com)
1 - RC car charger model 23-416 (Radio Shack) note: replaced by model 23-446
1 - RC 7.2V Battery Pack Connector Repair Kit 23-444 (for making charge adapter in the 2nd picture above) (Radio Shack)
1 - 6 Ft. Adaptaplug Extension Cable 273-1641 (cut in half - female side for pack, male side for charge adapter) (Radio Shack)
1 - Adaptaplug - B Type (Radio Shack)
1 - Hook-and-Loop/Velcro Strips 64-2345 (Radio Shack)
1 - Silver Paint Marker for marking polarity/proper connection on adapters (Office Supply)
1 - Multi Meter for testing voltage and polarity (Radio Shack)
1 - Soldering Iron
1 - Hot Glue Gun (or Tube of Silicone)
So, We Begin...
I'm not going to get into too many details here. If building packs is new to
you, the following page is a great place to start if this is your first attempt
at building your own:
http://www.rccentral.com/guides.asp?ATCL_ID=51
The jig is super important for gluing (hot glue or silicone) and soldering the batteries together. With out the jig, it would have been very difficult to keep the pack flat and together. Take the extra 15 minutes and make one before you start to assemble the pack.
Main parts for the new pack. I will use the RC charger to charge this pack too.
Gluing the cells together.
Cells after the tabs have been soldered. Refer to http://www.rccentral.com/guides.asp?ATCL_ID=51 for help with soldering the tabs.
Almost done.
Soldering the adapter on to the pack.
Finally, shrink wrapped the unit with a hair drier (a heat gun would have been much better if I had one). I used 105mm X 105mm square pieces of shrink wrap (wrap it once, then turn it 90 degrees and wrap it again to cover all sides). Now all I had to do was charge the battery, test the polarity (the tip should test as positive), and apply velcro to the pack and the Zaurus.
NOTE: I did not use the diode many others use, because I believe that this would prevent me from charging the pack. I get crazy hours out of the setup, so the Zaurus "charge back" issue does not seem to be a problem.
NOTE: Notice that I did not put velcro on the battery cover. If I did attach velcro here, it would rip the battery cover off (and break it) when I removed the pack from the unit.
The Zaurus is more balanced if you locate the pack in the center of the unit (the pack is kind of heavy), but I put in an extra piece of velcro on the top to be able to move the pack incase I'm using the keyboard a lot. I now have 4 of these pack, 2 for me and 2 for my wife. I never use the AC anymore because of the long life and 3-hour charge time.
Have fun!!!
Created By: Darren Young 11/23/2003
