I borrowed my friend’s iPhone and did a test, the mintyboost works!

Edit: Seems like I was just lucky and in general its -not- working for people ??? Must investigate!

I get a lot of feedback from cyclists who use a Mintyboost to charge their Garmin GPS devices on long bike rides. John posted to the Make forums with a quick-release version. Its a cool hack, and very well written! Click here to read about it

“The aim of this tutorial is to explain how I modified my Garmin quick-release bike mount (for the Forerunner x05) so that it can be used as a charging cradle. This allows the GPS unit to be used on long cycles/triathlons such as double centuries, ironman where the inbuilt battery is insufficient.” - John Hale

Natch had a bad day at JFK when his MintyBoost looked too much like an IED (The full story is here)

Just goes to show you, even Rocket Scientists have trouble at the security line…

Here’s a weekend project that I just wrapped up. Read all about it in the project page

We took a vintage bicycle lamp from the 60’s/70’s (Crown, Made in Japan)

Disassembled it and installed a 3.3V boost converter and a 1W white LED

To make a very bright, but still classy looking light for a classic three-speed bicycle

Lots more pictures and details here…

Minty Boost Self Lit

Minty Boost provides power for its own lighting. How convenient!
Uploaded by Collin Mel on 9 Jun 07, 1.54AM EDT.

Mintyboost kits can be used for more than charging iPods. For example, Colin Mel has made a portable flexilight using a mintyboost and a gooseneck USB keyboard lamp. Very noir…

I’ve updated the shop with the latest revision of the Mintyboost kit. The newest kits have two possible locations for R5 so that the latest iPods and the Zune, etc. will work just fine without any hacks. New instructions are up, too.

I’m experimenting with nicer silkscreens, as you can see these kits now come with white mask and black silk. I also finally figured out how to import custom graphics into EagleCAD (the importbmp.ulp script) so I’ve put the adafruit logo on!

Ziemaginations designed a Mintyboost-derived USB charger except he used a different chip. The MAX1675 is more efficient (up to 95%!) and can also provide more current for those high-powered devices

Grr! Apple has updated the firmware and USB handling on all their new iPods (and upgrades) so that they do not play with Mintyboost so nice. There’s a simple fix on the Mintyboost site, (just moving a resistor) and this will be updated in MintyBoost v1.2 which is in the works as we speak!

This saturday, I’ll be running 2 workshops for 10 people each wherein we build a mintyboost kit. The event is the EYEBEAM 2006 Hackshop Sign up today & bring a gum tin to put your charger in!

Shown above, a HOPE attendee builds her mintyboost mere minutes after purchase.

Yay I’m done with another small kit. This one is a nice battery-powered USB charger. You can plug in anything that charges over USB like iPods, cameras, cell phones, etc. to get a lot more run-time. It runs off of 2 AA batteries, alkaline or rechargeables and has 2.5x more juice than a 9V-powered design.

Some numbers…
iPod video (tested, using alkaline batteries): 3hrs more video (1 full recharge)
iPod shuffle (unverified): 60 hours more (5 full recharges)
iPod mini (unverified): 26 hours more (1.5 full recharges)

This project is suitable for beginners, some soldering tools are necessary but even if you’ve never soldered before it should be pretty easy. You can etch a circuitboard and/or breadboard this up, or simply buy a kit.

I also spent a bunch of time documenting the process by which kits are born, so that people can learn about how to design stuff like this.

You can read all about it on the MintyBoost page or at Instructables and buy kits from the adafruit webshop.

Thanks to EYEBEAM Openlab for supporting this project as part of my fellowship!