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DIY Power Bank: 20,000mAh? - Discover the efficiency of a DIY 20,000mAh USB-C power bank compared to commercial versions, as a control board and lithium batteries charge up an array of devices, including a soldering iron and mini-hotplate, while also considering the project's overall cost.

Fan Hack: Power Bank to Battery-Free Desk Fan! - Learn how to transform a battery-operated desk fan into a rechargeable one using a power bank and some simple modifications.

Another Street Battery Salvage - In this video, I plucked a battery from a Honey Melon street crystal, ending up with another 500-milliamp hour battery to add to my growing collection. After checking the connection, I added a protective PCB and tested the battery - a reasonable 3.5 volts at a flat level. Following the safe soldering of wires and wrapping it up, I hooked the revamped battery to my charger. It showed promising results, charging quickly at one amp with voltage visibly on rise. After a full recharge, I performed a load test which unfortunately gave a disappointing 311 milliamp hour. It falls short of my other salvaged batteries – 500 and 550 milliamp hour, but nonetheless, it’s a fine addition to the collection.

USB Power Bank Hack - Learn how a seemingly harmless USB power bank can be used to hack a computer, showcasing the dangers of plugging in random devices and the importance of being cautious with computer security.

Reviving FREE Batteries: Test, Make Safe & DIY Capacity Tester! - Learn how to test and safely use free batteries in DIY projects by building a homebrew battery tester with an ESP32 and a simple circuit. Find out how to make batteries safe by adding protection boards, and see the results of testing battery capacities and discharge curves.

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DIY 20,000mAh Power Bank - Was it worth it? - In this blog post, I embarked on a fun project to create a DIY power bank using two 10,000mAh lithium cells I had lying around, and a charge control board. After some tinkering and tests, I learned that measuring power bank efficiency requires more than looking at amp-hours. With some help from a friend, I found out our power bank was actually over 93% efficient, a pretty fantastic result. Despite some challenges with certain devices not drawing their full potential power from my power bank, I concluded that while it was an enjoyable project, buying a ready-made power bank might be more convenient.

I got this feeling bezos is watching - Discovered my Hue switch battery performance is correlated with room temperature after a nifty web scrape of Amazon's device usage history. While it's a given that batteries are temperature-sensitive, actual data from my own living room provided a neat confirmation, graphing a daily pattern. Wanted to go green with a rechargeable lithium coin cell, but the voltage risk to the ATmega256RFR2 on the PCB is a no-go. For now, it's back to the humdrum world of regular coin cells and unexciting battery charts. Dive into the video for a deeper geek-out on this!

No Power? No Problem! A Wireless Pi Doom Machine - In my latest wireless charging experiments, I got my hands on a set of wireless charging PCBs and dove into testing different voltage inputs and their efficiency levels. It was interesting to realise that the 5V input managed to provide a decent efficiency of 73%, while 12V input struggled and heated the receiver board excessively. With the perks and limits of this setup explored, I took a whirl at creating a wireless Pi Doom machine. It worked like a charm! However, I quickly noticed the need to split charging and boost board into two different modules - a project to look forward to. Half the fun is getting there! Check out the video [here](https://youtu.be/glCIuOoFm7U) for more detail on the project.

Picking up Free Lithium Cells Off the Street and Making them Safe for Use - This blog post reveals how you can salvage lithium cells from the many discarded, disposable vape devices that get littered in our towns and cities. With a pair of pliers and some bravery, I managed to rescue some decent batteries, which still had a good amount of power in them. However, with no in-built protection in these cells, I also demonstrated the importance of adding a battery protection board to ensure they are safe for use in various projects. Conclusively, through rummaging in the trash, I not only acquired useful components for my projects but also took a step towards making the planet a cleaner place.

Energy Scavenging - Can we keep our electronics running indefinitely? - After a previous unsuccessful attempt to power my Christmas lights with solar power, I've decided to try run my ultra-energy efficient ePaper weather display on solar energy. This display, already low on power consumption thanks to ESP32's deep sleep mode, is now paired with the BQ25570 energy-harvesting board and lithium cell to test if solar power can keep it running. Despite the limited Scottish winter sun, initial results look promising. With a little more code tinkering, it is my belief that the weather display might just keep running indefinitely and never need charging again.