This was a project that I wanted to do for a long time but kept delaying or working on other things. So I decided to push myself into finalizing it by making a video tutorial out of it. (Yeah, that worked out great, it took me about 2 weeks to record and edit it but it's done
)
Below you have a series of 4 videos that go through planning, building, testing etc a 9v battery replacement using supercapacitors.
I've used a
LT1037 boost regulator IC and a 25F 2.7v supercapacitor to keep my Uni-T UT61E powered logging voltage readings for more than 1 hours and 10 minutes, after charging the supercapacitor within 1 minute. With 100% surface mounted components it's possible to do even better.
If you watch the videos, I hope you won't be bothered too much by my accent and diction - English is not my native language. I will appreciate any feedback you may have.
Also, I consider myself somewhat of a beginner, so there may be some mistakes or terms not used quite properly or I may have made some incorrect assumptions in the videos... hope those won't stop you from watching the videos and pointing these things out to me and learn something out of it.
Tutorial "page" :
http://www.helpedia.com/pages/Designing_and_building_a_9v_battery_replacement_using_supercapacitorsPart 1
00:10 Introduction
03:10 9v battery types, discharge rates
18:30 Why are 9v batteries used in digital multimeters?
23:00 Why supercapacitors?
26:30 Benefits & trade-offs
H#1 (1/4) Designing & Building a 9v Replacement Battery Using SupercapacitorsPart 2 shows how to select a boost switching regulator that would be most suitable for creating such battery replacement, one that would be able to take out as much energy from the surpercapacitors, generating the higher voltage digital multimeters expect, with a reasonably good efficiency.
00:10 Selecting a DC-DC boost switching regulator
06:00 Things to look for when deciding on a DC-DC boost switching regulator
14:00 LT1037 datasheet and application circuit
24:00 Adapting datasheet application circuit for the 9v battery footprint
28:00 Simulating the circuit using LTSpice IV
H#2 (2/4) Designing & Building a 9v Replacement Battery Using SupercapacitorsIn Part 3, the circuit is actually built. After a brief presentation of the components needed for the circuit, changes to the planned circuit are explained, circuit is finalized, mistakes are detected and corrected and everything is ready to be tested using a home-made constant current load.
00:10 Components used to build the circuit
08:50 Building the circuit
16:40 Correcting mistakes
19:30 Testing the circuit using a constant current load
H#3 (3/4) Designing & Building a 9v Replacement Battery Using SupercapacitorsPart 4 goes through selecting a linear regulator suitable for charging the supercapacitor at a safe maximum current, and building such regulator from scratch.
After the custom charger is built and tested, some suggestions for improving and refining the built battery design are made and conclusions are drawn.
00:10 Selecting a suitable linear regulator IC, options for limiting charging current
14:50 Presenting and testing built custom charger
20:20 Problems experienced, changes made to planned design, suggestions and improvement suggestions
26:45 Conclusions
H#4 (4/4) Designing & Building a 9v Replacement Battery Using Supercapacitors// no youtube tag ?
PS. I want to thank Martin again for being willing to let me use segments of his videos to help with the presentation. Unfortunately, what I planned to use didn't make it in these videos... I've had to cut quite a bit to keep parts under 45 minutes and not get people bored.
