Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DIY Hacks & How To’s: Convert a Battery-Powered Device to AC Power”.
We use batteries to power a lot of our electronics, but there are some battery-powered devices that don’t need to be portable all the time. For instance, my son’s battery powered swing usually stays in the same general area, so it would be nice if i could power it with ac power and not waste the batteries and in this project, i’m going to show you how you can modify an old ac adapter To power your electronics in place of batteries more than likely a random power. Adapter won’t have the appropriate output to power your device, so we’re going to have to modify the power supply so that it can replicate the output of the original battery pack. The easiest way to do this is use a variable voltage regulator such as an lm317. This voltage regulator lets you, adjust the output voltage of a power source to a value that’s set by a pair of external resistors for most applications. This circuit can be simplified.
A little bit, the filtering capacitors are only needed if your circuit is sensitive to small power fluctuations, so in many cases they can be left off. Also, the variable resistor r2 is useful. If you want the circuit to be adjustable, but if you’re going to use the power supply exclusively on one device, you can replace it with a regular resistor.
Now we need a way to connect the regulator to the device that we want to power. You could just wire the output of the regulator directly to the battery terminals, but depending on the geometry of the battery pack, this can be inconvenient to connect and disconnect. So instead i decided to use dummy batteries. These are anything that fits in the battery housing and connects the power supply to the battery connectors.
To make these, i cut a wooden dowel into sections that were a little bit shorter than the battery. Then i drilled a hole in each end and inserted some large screws. Lastly, i connected the two screws with a short piece of wire on one of them. I cut out an extra section of wood to make room for the regulator circuit when connecting the regulator be sure to label which side is positive and which side is negative.
The last step is to cut a small slot in the wall of the battery housing. For the wires from the power supply, then just load up the dummy batteries into the housing and you’re ready to try it out. Now you have a choice in how to power. Your electronics, you can have the convenience and portability of batteries or you can save the batteries and money by using ac power thanks for watching and check back next week for more projects, you .
