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04/24/2006: "Gathering parts, not always the right ones!"
Ok let’s get started. The first thing I needed to do was find a Li-Ion battery that would fit in the cam and hopefully have a charging circuit that would fit inside the cam. This turned out to be a little harder than I thought. I made a trip to our local battery store and was informed that there was no such thing as a 1.5v AA sized rechargeable battery. I knew that this was incorrect as I had seen such batteries on the net. I actually found just what I was looking for at Wal-Mart! A 3v digital camera battery pack with charger.
I was hoping that the circuit in the charger would fit inside the cam since it was quite small. Although this would require a wall wart to charge the cam, this would be the “easy” way out. As you can see it is really a very simple circuit. 
After trying several different ways to make this fit it just would not. Back to the drawing board! I needed to find a way to charge this battery inside the cam. I checked my cell phone and it contained a Li-Ion battery which meant the same charger I used in my drive bay mod may work on this battery as well. 
Checking the charging voltage on the original charger I found that it charged at 4.5 volts. 
cam22
The cell phone charger put out 11.2 volts @ 12volts in. Just for grins I hooked it up to 5 volts and now it was putting out 3.9 volts! This would be enough to charge the battery just a little slower. It also meant that I would be able to use the USB port to power the charger. 
Not much bigger than a quarter, it will fit perfectly in the cam, 
The only modification I made to the charger is lengthening the wires on the capacitor so I could bend it far enough sideways to clear the cam's pc board.
On to the next problem…disconnecting the battery from the cam for charging. This battery charged at one end and discharged at the other.
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| Discharge end | Charging end |
With slight modification the original battery contacts in the cam would work for the discharge end but the charging end was a different story. To solve this problem I turned to one of my favorite building materials, Shapelock.
What is ShapeLock? To quote the Shapelock site:
ShapeLock is an Ultra-High Molecular Weight Low Temperature Thermoplastic.
What does "Ultra-High Molecular Weight Low Temperature Thermoplastic" mean in laymans English?
ShapeLock is a super strong plastic similar to Nylon or Polypropylene in toughness.
However, unlike the two former plastics it does not need high temperatures or high pressures to form into useful shapes.
ShapeLock is easily hand-formed into shape at just 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
I have used this stuff to build many things from saw handles to a cam mount for my kite. It is very strong and easy to shape. It will be perfect for the charging cap. When molding it around things you must be careful because it will stick to most anything plastic while it is hot. So I started by covering the battery with plastic wrap (one thing it will not stick to) and molding the Shapelock over it. Then I trimmed it into a neat little cap.
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After trimming the cap the next step is to drill the holes for the wires.
To make contact I used a small spring and cut the ends off and soldered them to the ends of the wires.
I then stuck the wires through the cap and gently heated the spring. This allowed me to secure the spring to the cap.
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Now that we have most of our parts ready the next step will be to modify the case to hold all the stuff we want in it.
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