How to change the batteries on Spykee, the robot.

Spykee came back to life when attached to a 12V portable battery.

In the video below, we hack into Spykee to attach new leads which will later allow for the connection of an external battery pack.  We also connect a multimeter to monitor the battery volage.  We connect a 12V battery, charged with a solar panel, for testing.  Yes, Spykee works on 12V and could be off-the-grid!

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Next, we connected a new external battery pack that uses standard AA rechargeable batteries.  Nothing proprietary here.  We made the new battery pack and now Spykee is better than new. His new external AA battery pack has a higher charge capacity than the original pack that came from the manufacturer.  The original pack was rated at 1,800 mAh while my new home-made replacement battery is rated at 2,400 mAh.  The batteries I chose are Imedion Low-Discharge AA batteries made by Powerex.  See how it works in the video below.

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Testing the Original Battery Pack

I tried freezing the original batteries that came with Spykee.  That improved the battery voltage, but was not enough of an improvement to get Spykee moving.

Spykee's original 9.6V NiMH battery

The video below shows the freezing process and how freezing increased the voltage of the batteries.

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Disassembly of the original Spykee battery pack

When I took the pack apart, I found 2 bad cells and 6 good cells.  The good cells could be used for another project.

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I put the two bad cells into my battery charger.  One of them charged up.  That leaves me with one cell at 0 Volts.  I plan to surge it with my solar panel.  Spykee’s original batteries will live on in another application.

12V adapter-splitter review

This adapter plugs into a single 12V battery outlet and splits it into three outlets.  Could be used to power three gadgets from your car or from wherever else you have a 12V outlet.  I have one in my house for off-the-grid backup power.

Video review…

This adapter allows you to power up three items from a single 12V source. In the video above, I powered up a cell phone, a bluetooth transmitter, and an Arduino circuit board.

Powering an Arduino board with a 12V battery

I bought this item from MPJA Online. I have ordered a few things from them now and am impressed with their fast shipping and cheap prices. Their price for this item is $6 plus shipping. (I am not being compensated in any way for this review. This post is just for information sharing.)

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Velleman sells a kit that you can build, advertised to be a sound indicator.  “…simple sound-to-light unit for music, the hard of hearing:  can be used to indicate the telephone, doorbell, barking dog.  Adjustable sensitivity with potentiometer…“  We built the MK103 kit and made a video showing a product test and review.

The construction took an hour with the only tool being a soldering iron.  An additional half hour was required to trouble-shoot the board since it didn’t work the first time.

I found a couple components were shorted together on the bottom side due to poor soldering by me.  Another tool that would be helpful for this project is a pair of diagonal cutters, but I don’t have any, so I couldn’t cut the wires to the proper length on the bottom of the board.  I also couldn’t mount the unit to the battery pack since the wires stick out too far.  Some day I’ll buy some diagonal cutters and trim the wires down.

Once the unit was finished, it worked.

Click image above for video.

Jan-17-2008 Update

A family member gave me some diagonal cutters at Christmas so I came back to this circuit board, trimmed the wires off the back, and was able to mount the circuit board to the battery pack.  Here is the final, completed circuit:

A few observations:

A fresh battery made the circuit more sensitive and responsive than an older battery.  When I put a fresh battery in the unit, the LEDs lit up more at lower volume sounds.

The microphone was not very sensitive, even with a fresh battery.  (Turning the potentiometer all the way to one side basically turned it off.  Turning the potentiometer all the way to the opposite side led to the results shown in the video above.)  After making this video, I gently tapped on the mic with my finger and then the LED’s lit up for even soft sounds.  Some how, tapping on the mic made the circuit more responsive.  But that only lasted a minute and then the circuit went back to behaving as before, requiring loud sounds to light up the LEDs.

When I put the circuit next to our phone and made the phone ring, the LEDs did not turn on.  Our phone was not loud enough to trigger the LEDs.  However, my kids enjoyed yelling at the circuit and watching the lights turn on.

The kit was rated “beginner” level.  Since this kit requires a soldering iron, the beginner should be old enough to respect the heat of an iron so as to not get burned.  My son enjoyed watching the entire build process, helped place the components into the board, and learned about electronics along the way.