cooder
Well-known member
Something from left field: I wanted to make me a small portable board with rechargeable battery powered. Quick grab and go, good for jam sessions and also to quickly throw some pedals on there for testing etc.
I have done one in the past similar using 18650 batteries, and that worked well too. However, I found swapping batteries and having enough grunt important in this, so I bought a charger and batteries for 18V powered drills (same as I use in workshop anyway) and gutted the charging station to turn it into battery holder and put a buck converter inside to regulate voltage down to 9.4 V and keep it constant there.
I stuck two little voltmeters in, the blue one shows battery voltage, red one show outgoing voltage to pedals. So I always can see if voltage in battery drops and quickly stick replacement in when needed. Should run quite a bit though, the smaller battery is rated at 2.5 Ah and the bigger one at 4 Ah.
Made a wee wooden board that holds up to 7 x 125B boxes and recess for the power supply. Board is made from NZ native red beech.
Here we go, a bit picture heavy to show the process:
Cutting out holes for 9V jacks and voltage displays. Dremel works great for this, if you try to drill plastic with a normal spiral bit it often cracks, ask me how I know.
Buck converter and voltage displays installed.
The wooden pedal board:
I have done one in the past similar using 18650 batteries, and that worked well too. However, I found swapping batteries and having enough grunt important in this, so I bought a charger and batteries for 18V powered drills (same as I use in workshop anyway) and gutted the charging station to turn it into battery holder and put a buck converter inside to regulate voltage down to 9.4 V and keep it constant there.
I stuck two little voltmeters in, the blue one shows battery voltage, red one show outgoing voltage to pedals. So I always can see if voltage in battery drops and quickly stick replacement in when needed. Should run quite a bit though, the smaller battery is rated at 2.5 Ah and the bigger one at 4 Ah.
Made a wee wooden board that holds up to 7 x 125B boxes and recess for the power supply. Board is made from NZ native red beech.
Here we go, a bit picture heavy to show the process:
Cutting out holes for 9V jacks and voltage displays. Dremel works great for this, if you try to drill plastic with a normal spiral bit it often cracks, ask me how I know.
Buck converter and voltage displays installed.
The wooden pedal board:
