Lithium Battery Charging - The MacGyver Way

Hi, I'm MacGyver. On a recent tactical espionage mission in Lebanon I had to take pictures of local cats for the sake of national security. Unfortunately, after ~300 shots, the camera's battery ran out of juice. Since I had to travel light, I did not have the charging dock with me. What to do? I had to take more pictures of cats or else America would be destroyed by communists!! I needed to find a way to recharge my camera without using the dock. I didn't even have a soldering iron, wire, or a screwdriver to help. No matter... I'm MacGyver lol.

I didn't have the charging dock with me. I was in deep doodoo.

My first step was to try reverse engineer the camera's connector. Crap. Too tiny and non-USBish.

Next I thought about taking the battery out and charging it directly.

I pickpocketed a mobile phone and charger from an old lady's purse. She was probably hizbullah anyway so it didn't matter.


Next I began an internal monologue explaining my actions, just in case a nearby TV audience could hear my thoughts.

"Since all phones nowadays use a single cell lithium ion or lithium polymer battery, I knew that anything that could charge the phone's battery would also charge my camera's battery. Modern camera and phone batteries also contain overcharge and overcurrent protection circuitry in them, so putting two batteries in parallel would be safe. All I had to do was find a way to electrically connect the camera battery to the phone's charging circuitry. Using a combination of aluminium foil and scotch tape, I wired the camera battery's + and - contacts to the phone's battery contacts. Then I connected the phone's charger, and started charging the camera battery."


A ghetto polarity detector was helpful in this project

Taping aluminium foil to the camera's battery.

More foil and tape was used to put the phone and camera batteries in parallel.

Inserting the 69ing batteries back into the phone, ready to be charged.

Everything charged as normal.

After hiding in a cigarette factory toilet for 2 hours, I returned and found my camera's battery was almost fully charged.

Armed with my working camera, I was able to take more pictures of cats, and by inexplicable hollywood logic, was able to prevent the USA from attack.
=

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