Rechargeable GBC

mutantsrus · Post by **mutantsrus** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:43 pm

So... I got bored earlier and tried out a hack I found on Hack-a-day (who frequently showcases Heck's works) about hacking an Elefun. For those who don't know, elefun is a kid's toy that uses a fan to shoot small fabric butterflies into the air. It runs on 4 C batteries, so jamming a nice 6VDC charger in there solves the problem of buying expensive batteries because my sister is a tad butterfly-happy. Whilst perusing through a mangled pile of chargers, I found one that was labeled as 4.9 volts... hmm... a little more than 3 AAs.. what could I do with that... hmmm... then I found an old 3V rechargeable cordless wall phone battery.... now the gears start turning. I quickly reach for my old GBC and some packing tape.
Currently I'm not sure how long the battery will last.. if at all. I tested it by charging for a few seconds. The light and screen did stay on for some time, albeit a a second or two. However, that's still longer than it would have had it not had a rechargeable battery in it. So that shows me that it can store a little juice. I'm just gonna give it some time and hope for the best.
I'm also thinking about adding a backlight.
My question, however; is whether or not anyone her might have some other good suggestions for my little project.
Any ideas are appreciated.

Master Kirby · Post by **Master Kirby** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 9:46 am

Hi mutantrus,

I think you have the right idea. The 4.9 volt charger would be too much for the GBC. If you correctly connect the contacts to the GBC, any 3V battery should work, whether they are standard AAs or rechargables. The type of battery doesn't matter much. It just needs to have the right voltage (3V).

If you have a 3v phone battery, you could either wire it to the contacts in the battery compartment, or you could just connect it to a 3V power plug and plug that into the power jack in the bottom of the GBC (In the GBPocket the power jack was right next to the headphone jack). When I had a Gameboy Pocket, I couldn't find any rechargable AAA batteries, so my Dad and I wired a AA battery holder to a 3V power plug that we got at Radio Shack. By plugging it into the power jack in the GBP, it would run fine; the same as if it was running on stansard AAAs.

If you wanted a longer play time, you could make your own battery pack by wiring an infinite amount of 3V batteries (or two 1.5v batteries that are in series) in parallel, and connect them to a power plug.

mutantsrus · Post by **mutantsrus** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:42 am

Well I'm already finished with the battery and such... it charges via the cellphone charger just fine despite the nearly 2V difference. The battery will last (on a full charge) at least 3-5 hours.. I have yet to run it dead though... so more testing later will give me more exact numbers. I also wired a USB book light to the battery. The light itself has a switch seperate from the GBC so it doesn't have to be on during day-play.. but when the lights go out, you can just flip the switch and it works just fine.
At the current moment, the thing looks pretty ugly. It's completely held together with packing tape until I get everything the way I want it. Once that is done I'll solder it and find some way to lodge the battery in there. I'll probably end up taking apart the case and cutting out the plastic in the battery hatch so it'll fit better.
Maybe I'll post some pics later. It looks like crap, but it performs with flying colors. The only problem is the charging setup that I currently have. Basically, there are two wires just dangling off the side of the dang thing. To charge, I just twist the wires to the charger wires and let it sit there, being careful not the let the two wires make contact.
If anyone had a good idea how I could fix this, please offer your suggestions. I was going to find some piece of crap electronic toy of some sort and it's corresponding charger, then hack it up with some pliers until I had the the male and female adapters to use , but I can't find anything that I want to destroy. (Well at least not anything where the port isn't soldered directly to the board.)