Building a portable power station for field charging

This instructable is a field charger/ power supply to run low draw electronic devices such as phones radios and cameras in the field without having to go find an outlet or 12v receptacle. this instructable is intended for someone with a reasonable working knowledge of electricity. if you are not confident in your wiring ability do not attempt this instructable as you could cause serious damage to your equipment

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step 1

Some example devices that can be charged are from left to right.~ Inverter~ Radios~ iPods~ Phones~ Digital cameras ~ Rechargeable packs

step 2Tools

these are some of the basic tools required for the project, depending on your components you may need more tools ~ Soldering Iron -- you can u…

step 3Parts

Listed below are some of the basic parts that are used in this instructable, your build may require fewer or more parts depending on the requirements of your box. the upper…

step 4Accesories

Some accessories that you may want to consider are voltage meters to see how much charge your batteries hold. Binding posts on the outside to make hooking up solar panels a…

step 5Plan

this is the basic plan of how everything will be connected. if you are going to add any accesories or other features such as a voltmeter or usb plug this is where you want …

step 6Layout

The next step is to find the optimum layout for your batteries, receptacles, charger and any other accessories you will use. I placed my battery bank in the center for a ni…

step 7Testing

Arguably the most important step in any project is testing, for this project I tested everything. it is still easy to make changes at this point and much better to find out…

step 8testing the layout

Once we have tested all of our components, it’s time to assemble everything and test it again. it is a little hard to see but the batteries are connected in rows posi…

step 9Assembly~1

The first step in the assembly process is to cut your connecting wires, the length of these will depend on the geometry of your cells, mine where very close so I used a fou…

step 10Assembly~2

The next step is to wire up the ends of the cells, these will tie all the positives together and the negatives. I prefer to solder but you can use wire nuts if you are not…

step 11Assembly~3

The third step is to wire it all together the same way that you tested it, I started by connecting the middle ones positive to negative then moved to the outside ones posit…

step 12Testing~2

Once you have it all wired we need to check our wiring again just to make sure that we wired it correctly and. This is very important as these batteries can easily start a …

step 13Testing~3 & Operation

The last and final test is to plug in your devices and check that they charge or operate, in the example I demonstrated how versatile the system is at taking almost any cha…

step 14other thoughts~conclusion

After building this project and using it I realized that I didn’t need 6 batteries and 4 would be plenty for all of my applications so I set out for a smaller contain…