6 January & February 2021 http://www.elektormagazine.com
For experimenting with electronics we are used to our trusty power
supplies on a lab bench. While this is the usual way to get prototypes
up and running the leads sometimes become a bit of a handicap if
the device we build is meant to be portable or moving around the lab.
The workaround can be a bunch of batteries carefully crafted with
duct tape, hot glue and some cheap DC/DC converter into a kind
of portable battery pack. That works for a prototype, but it isn’t that
nice, especially if you need 5 or 12 V for your device. This can be done
in a better way and it has. After meeting at the 2019 productronica
fair in Munich, Elektor and popular engineer GreatScott! decided to
team up to develop a handy DIY kit just for you.
Who is GreatScott? Great Scott! is the name of a Youtube channel [1]
launched back in 2013 presenting electronic projects and knowledge
to more than 1 million subscribers. The videos include a wide variety of
DIY projects that viewers can recreate. Many other videos offer inspi-
ration and clear solutions to engineering problems. As a few videos
have already launched featuring Elektor products, the idea came up
to present a DIY kit that everyone that is interested can use to expend
their knowledge and skills.
GreatScott! [2] has sketched the raw schematic of a LiPo powered,
rechargeable supply that shall be user buildable with SMD compo-
nents. All the components and ingredients look not that complicated
on first sight, a charging IC for LiPo batteries, a DC/DC converter
to provide 5 V and 12 V and a battery protection IC. All components
are chosen to be 1206 in size where possible, to allow even begin-
ners to get all SMD components onto the PCB and hopefully show
that soldering SMD is not a kind of black magic that only well trained
wizards can do. Parts that need some kind of special attention are
already built onto the PCB to make your start into SMD assembly even
a bit easier and avoid dealing with small pins and pads underneath
ICs. For charging you can use direct attached cables providing 5 V
or use the USB-C connector on the add-on PCB to provide power
to recharge the battery. With USB-C it is a lot easier to connect the
plug in the right orientation and the connector on the PCB itself is
held in place by four THT mounting holes for more stability. Besides
using the power supply a fun part of the project is building it in the
first place. And this comes with a nice step by step guide included in
the package. Refer to Figure 1 for a first look.DIY LiPo
Supercharger Bundle
GreatScott and Elektor’s LiPo Charger, Booster,
and Protector
Need a rechargeable LiPo power supply for 5- and 12-V output? Want to practice SMD
soldering? You can with a little help from GreatScott! (a YouTuber with 1+ million
subscribers) and Elektor. In this article, we detail both the handy portable power supply and
the obstacles we encountered during the development process.
Figure 1: Boxed product.
labs project
By Mathias Claußen (Elektor)