NimH AAA to 5V, suggestions?

a 'soft'

I set off on a similar quest to power a PIC project in a "remote" location. While rummaging through the discount junk toys at Grocery Outlet, I stumbled across a $5 ipod charger. It's a double size usb stick with a 750mah lithium battery that charges from usb and puts out 5V regulated up to 750ma. Got a battery level button/light. Now, I don't have to build a charger or a regulator or, the most difficult part, a box to put it in...no nothing. Plug and play. Certainly not worth the original list price, but if you can find one on closeout, they're easier than most anything you can do. Doesn't have a switch, but if you don't load it, it stays charged for weeks.

Something like this

or this

or

On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:07:41 +1000) it happened David Eather wrote in :

WOW!

Thats is nice :-) Cannot beat that price.

Not much sun here I am afraid, I once bought such a solar charger, useless, I still use the battery box. That was NiCad days, and the self discharge was more than the sun could deliver here.

here.

Maybe you could use a sunlamp to run the solar charger? ;^)

This model works well. I have a couple. But sad to say there is another model that is too small for fat rechargeable batteries and is the wrong length - AA's need to have some magnets added to increase their length (how can anyone get !that! so far wrong)

deliver here.

These are LiPo - they should have a very low self discharge - I will probably find out myself in a few weeks

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:35:11 +1000) it happened David Eather wrote in :

Here is my version:

deliver here.

Let me know please. Would be nice if it worked.

I think 'xnews' has a cleanup function to fix broken lines.