OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Deals and Great Z Buys => Topic started by: zaurusbs on January 09, 2004, 06:20:20 pm
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http://store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/pdabatexpocp.html (http://store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/pdabatexpocp.html)
shipping\'s $4.99, but it\'s still a good price.
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http://store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/pdabatexpocp.html (http://store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/pdabatexpocp.html)
shipping\'s $4.99, but it\'s still a good price.
Try this guy. Phenominal prices, service and combined shipping:
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?View...&sort=3&rows=50 (http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=peakcloudy&include=0&since=-1&sort=3&rows=50)
(even sent me a new one when mine stopped working)
No assocaition, just a satisfied customer.
BTW, he has extenders, AC Adapter, and car adaptors....remember, never start your car with Z in car charger...and he combines shipping.
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FWIW, I\'ve been very happy with my extender - it\'s a little bulky, but much better than not having a Zaurus when traveling.
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It\'s cheaper to make one out of Radio Shack parts. Total cost will be less than the shipping on these things.
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It\'s cheaper to make one out of Radio Shack parts. Total cost will be less than the shipping on these things.
I\'m up for a do-it-yourselfer, can you post a part list ! :wink:
Thanks,
Qman...
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FWIW, I\'ve been very happy with my extender - it\'s a little bulky, but much better than not having a Zaurus when traveling.
Can you confirm that it works only with rechargable batteries?
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I like this one as it powers either through the USB port, or the DC jack, and cool slim design which sort of matches the Cxxx series:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/ba...atexwitusb.html (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/batexwitusb.html)
(http://store3.yimg.com/I/semsons-inc_1788_218328)
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I\'m up for a do-it-yourselfer, can you post a part list ! :wink:
It\'s been a while, so I don\'t know the Radio shack PNs, but basically, all you need is
1) 1 Battery holder for 4 batteries. Take your pick of battery size.
2) 1 tip. They come in 2-packs, and Radio shack has a lettering scheme for different sizes, I forgot which size it is, but it shouldn\'t be too hard to figure out. If you bring your Z to the store they can find the right one.
Solder the leads from the battery holder to the tip and that\'s it! You\'ll get 4.8V from NIMH batteries, or 6V from alkies. (you can add a diode to drop the voltage if you want)
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I made my own including a diode so I could charge it from the car (4 Ds) and with a Y connector to do both my Z and GPS.
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I bought one from ebay but it wont charge the Z because I was told, I was using regular nonrechargable batteries. How hard would it be to put a diode in the battery extender so I can drop the voltage to 5V? I dont know much about electronics. Can you elaborate?
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Hi cmisip,
Get yourself some rechargeable 2300mAH NIMH batteries, and a charger. Almost as much power as non-rechargeables but will save you a lot of money.
If you still want to use the regular nonrechargable batteries, then you have to cut one wire on your battery extender and place the diode inbetween. A regular rectifier diode, e.g. 1N4001 should do. You can only put it in one of two ways and if you put it in wrong, it doesn\'t work and you just change the direction.
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omega,
that diode sounds so familiar to me, is it the same type used in bridge type power supplies? Once worked on a project like that in elementary school to convert AC to DC. I would have thought to use a resistor though, but after some reading, I find that there is an inherent voltage drop with a diode due to internal resistance. Thanks a lot for your advice, I shall give it a try.
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It\'s been a while, so I don\'t know the Radio shack PNs, but basically, all you need is
1) 1 Battery holder for 4 batteries. Take your pick of battery size.
2) 1 tip. They come in 2-packs, and Radio shack has a lettering scheme for different sizes, I forgot which size it is, but it shouldn\'t be too hard to figure out. If you bring your Z to the store they can find the right one.
Solder the leads from the battery holder to the tip and that\'s it! You\'ll get 4.8V from NIMH batteries, or 6V from alkies. (you can add a diode to drop the voltage if you want)
Got it thanks I went with the 4 NIMH batteries!
Regards,
Qman...
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How many hours extra would the 4 NIMH batteries give a person?
How easy is it to find a 3rd party power adapter that I could use at my place of work instead of a home made battery pack to power my Z5500 at my desk?
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How easy is it to find a 3rd party power adapter that I could use at my place of work instead of a home made battery pack to power my Z5500 at my desk?
I use a AC adaptor from a iPac 3650, same power rating as the Sharp supplied adaptor.
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How many hours extra would the 4 NIMH batteries give a person?
Depends on the rating of the batteries, and your usage patterns. But the best way to approach this question is to compare the batteries you buy to the capacity of your internal battery. For example, if you use 2000 maH AA batteries and your internal battery is 1500 maH, then you should get more than double the runtime. If you use C or D batteries, you can obviously get a lot more.
When doing this calculation, realize that 4 2000maH batteries at 1.2V in a battery pack is still 2000maH at 4.8V (not 8000maH). If you wanted even more run time, you could hook 2 battery packs up in parallel to increase the capacity, for example you could use 8 AA batteries and get 4000maH.
If you\'re really hardcore, order 8 D batteries with an 11000 maH rating, built a \"battery cube\", and get almost 10X runtime.
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Can you confirm that it works only with rechargable batteries?
That has been my experience, yes. I had a couple of sets of rechargeable AA\'s, so it wasn\'t an issue. It would be nicer if it ran on standard batteries, but it\'s still a pretty handy device.
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You would not get double the run-time if the external batteries were the same rating as the internal batteries!
You have to remember two things. First is plain \'loss\'. You not only go through various connections (each connection has a resistance loss), but you have to go through the charging/power circuit of the Z itself. This eats some battery power.
Second, if you have batteries iin the Z, and who wouldn\'t?, the power from the external batteries would be used to charge them. Charging batteries is always at a power loss. It takes more power to charge than the power return.
I haven\'t done battery electronics in years, so I can\'t come up with any numbers, but there\'s no way that an equal external battery supply can double the run-time of the internal batteries.
Luckily, you can buy batteries with considerable more power than the internals and may be able to approach doubling the life. Maybe there\'s a battery expert out there who could figure it out? Too much trouble for me ;-)
But the Semson\'s units are nice and well worth the money. Even though I built my own for a couple of dollars, I just received the simple $6 Semson\'s unit. I liked the idea of an on/off switch and it turned out to be a bit smaller than the one I made.
I also bought their \"Pocket Power Bank\" with the buolt-in AC charger. This comes with a set of 1600mah Ni-mh batteries and is quite a bit bigger than the simple battery pack. But it has the advantage of being able to plug directly into any AC socket to recharge. That seemed like quite a convenience to me. I didn\'t realize though that it used an external usb connector wire to plug itno the Z. That\'s not bad, but it\'s an extra piece to get lost....
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How many hours extra would the 4 NIMH batteries give a person?
How easy is it to find a 3rd party power adapter that I could use at my place of work instead of a home made battery pack to power my Z5500 at my desk?
I use the serialio Zthincable :
http://serialio.com/products/adaptors/ZThi...hinCableUSB.htm (http://serialio.com/products/adaptors/ZThinCableUSB.htm)
It charges my Z and let\'s me sync/vnc/ssh at the same time while at work or on the road.
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I tried adding an in4001 diode to my battery extender. When the zaurus is off, the charging light is continously on. When the zaurus is on, the charging light flickers. I looked at the back of the diode package and it said, voltage drop of 1.6V. I am thinking therefore that the resulting voltage with non rechargeable batteries is 6 V - 1.6 = 4.4 which is not enough to power the Z. I dont have a tester yet so I cant verify the voltage output. I think I put it in correctly because otherwise it shouldn\'t work. Did I just pick up the wrong diode? Or are there different flavors of in4001 with different voltage drops? Can anybody using a diode in a battery extender care to comment? Thanks.
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I bought this semsons extender which has already been mentioned here before
Semsons Extender with USB (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/batexwitusb.html)
and tried it with my SL-C760. I didn't read all the postings and didn't worry when I used it with 4 1.5V nonrechargable AA-Batteries. First, the Z's Battery-Led started to blink and I couldn't turn the Z on but since then it works immediately in about 3 of 4 times and charges the Z. Moreover it seems possible to avoid the blinking battery-led when I turn on the Z before I turn on the extender.
Could it be that the Z is protected against too high voltages and indicates this by blinking? Do you think that it's dangerous what I'm doing or has Semson already integrated an LED into this extender to keep voltage at about 5V?
I don't have a tool to measure this. Has someone else tried this with 1.5V AAs?
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Tried one of these some time back. It does have voltage protection, but with a fresh set of AAs the reading on a voltmenter was still over 6 volts.
It was over 7 volts on a unit with no protection.
So personally, I would still stick with Rechargables...