Lithion/lithpo rechargable battery swap mod. wip

[1TONpete]

The idea is to swap a ps3 style battery pack in for the PNC pack. Safely!
I hard wired up a lith pack from a PS3 after market controller to the PnC kits battery pack's circuit board. This was ok for just powering the controller temporarily but not good for charging. As the PnC is a NIMH pack not LITH.

I used a 2-pin JST connector just like those found on PS3 controllers to make the batteries easily swappable.

The plan now is to wire in something like this

Better product...

 inside the PnC battery pack. Take out the PnC circuit and replace with the charging board.
Next either I will just use the mini usb to charge or I will try to simulate the PNC charging set up by trying to wire in the usb connections from the PnC cable on the controller board to the charging board.

[FOOKz™]

I came up with this while we were talking in the shoutbox.

Basically you connect any 5v source from USB to the input.

If you want to use a 3.7v input instead of a 5v input you just remove the red 3.7v Zener regulator and the red resistor next to it. (simple as that).


The two regulators are in parallel when its charging.
The two regulators are in series when its not charging.

[magic_man185]

Fookz,

You would have to have over charge protection in order to use lithium batteries.  The MCP73831 is a low cost chip from Microchip that handles everything, from charging to over charge protection to voltage regulation.  You only need to add a couple of capacitors and a couple resistors to complete the circuit. I have attached the circuit diagram directly from the datasheet. Essentially, this is the circuit that is used by the first thing pete linked to, but you can make your own circuit a lot cheaper without having to buy the PCB from sparkfun (considering there probably isn't room for the pcb in the controller anyway). You would want to use the 3V zener you suggested between this charging circuit and the controller.