Creativity, electronics, using your head

[Illini]

Seems to me folks don't think outside the box as much as they should.
And it can be fun when you do it!

I got back from an offshore eight day fishing trip out of San Diego, way down south.
When I got back, I needed to call some folks, but my cell phone battery had died and I
left my charger at home. I couldn't use a pay phone either having long grown accustomed
to the cell phone remembering numbers so I don't have to.

The charger plugs into a little jack with too many wires to figure out, and too small to connect to.

So I took the battery out and saw it was 3.7 volts. My double A batteries are 1.5 volts. You need a
voltage drop to charge a battery so I connected three double A's in a series to make 4.5 volts.
Then I wired positive AA battery to positive cell phone connection, and negative to negative.
Ten minutes later, I had enough juice to make calls.

Be creative. You'll have a good time doing it.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Family Maps of Hinds County, Mississippi, Deluxe Edition - Grab it through Amazon!

[Voice of Reason]

Good Stuff Illini

Yeah, our imagination coupled with our mind = creativity.

Your experience reminds me of a friend whom is a soapstone craftsman. He rigged his cordless power tools to run on a homemade battery pack that consists of several cordless batteries joined together (don't ask me how). Same voltage, many more amp/hours. You gotta love human ingenuity.

 

[Illini]

Okay, here's creativity thingie number two. Your electricity goes out at your home. Dark. Refrigerator is warming up, along with your beer. No football to watch. Get the non-picture?

This happened to me a few years ago. So I'm thinkin' my next door neighbor is on a different transformer than mine and my other neighbors which just blew up. He's all lit up like Las Vegas and I'm living pre-Edison.

I switch off my main circuit breaker to separate my humble abode from the rest of humanity first. More to follow on that.
Then I find my 50 foot extension cord (maybe it's 100 feet, I can't recall), and cut the female end off, where I splice a second male plug. Now I have two plugs, to go into the wall, one at either end. I ask my neighbor to give me some juice just for downstairs and plug the other end into my kitchen where it runs my refrigerator, kitchen, and other stuff on that side of the panel, there being two sides yanno.

Now, you do NOT want to electrocute any guys when they start work on the transformer. Backfeed will convert your 110 volts into 6,000 and kill them instantly.