Alpenglow Industries
  • Store
    • Through-Hole Soldering Kits
    • SMT Soldering Kits
    • Tools and Accessories
    • Solderless Kits
    • Seasonal Blinkies
    • Programmable Kits for Makers
    • Textile and Yarn Tools
    • All Alpenglow Products
    • Bright Wearables
    • Makerbytes Soldering Kits
  • About
  • Blog
  • Instructions
    • How To Solder
    • Soldering Kits
    • Solderless Kits
    • Build A Blob
    • Tools
    • Coin Cell Power
    • SwitchTrick
    • SMT Garden
    • Foxy Pride
    • FUnicorn
    • Krampus
  • Contact

​Coin Cell Power Guide

Overview:
The Coin Cell Power board creates a way to permanently wire power into your badges and blinky boards with a side-loading CR2032 battery holder.  Just plug in a USB power source, select 3V or 5V to your board with the bottom switch, turn the top switch to ON, and plug the round end into your badge!

You can:
  • Make a permanent display of your blinky badge by using a USB wall wart, and never have to change batteries again!
  • Power multiple blinky badges daisy-chained together off of a single USB battery pack
  • Are you a badge maker?  Easily test your badges without having to fish a battery in and out every time.​
Picture
Picture
The Coin Cell Power is adaptable for a few different setups, here are more deets!
Power In to the board:
  • 5V via the USB-C connector
  • Daisy-chained from another Coin Cell Power board via either of the two JST PH 2-pin connectors
  • Input from any other source (like a lithium-ion battery) via either of the JST PH 2-pin connectors

Power Out to your badge:
  • ON or OFF via top switch.  All of our badges have ON/OFF switches, but others don't always!  ON/OFF only switches power on and off to the coin cell adapter that goes out to the badge, so you can turn one badge off and still have power daisy-chained to other badges down the line.
  • 5V or 3V selectable.  CR2032 batteries are 3V, but we use 2 stacked CR2016 batteries on some of our badges to create 5-6V, which gives more overhead and life to certain LED colors like blue, white, and UV purple. 
    • 5V is directly from USB or the JST 2-pin daisy-chain connector.  Note that there's an inline diode between the USB and JST connectors to protect from accidentally powering a badge off of 2 sources, this means that there is a single diode voltage drop and "5V" may be more in the 4.5V - 4.8V range.
    • 3V is provided via an on-board LDO regulator.  It has a whopping 1A current limit, more than plenty for most simple blinky badges, but note that if you want to run it near that current, you'll be dissipating 2W of heat and will likely need some extra heat-sinking.

Picture
Mounting:
One hole sized for 4-40 screws (or M3).  Screws and standoffs not included.

Other Cool Stuff:
There are test points a-plenty, just to help you troubleshoot stuff.  Or you can solder wires to them and pull extra power lines off the badge to hook up several badges from one Coin Cell Power board.  It's also possible to measure current consumption of your badge with these steps:
  • Power the board through either USB or the JST connectors
  • Turn the ON/OFF switch to OFF (this acts as the break in the circuit)
  • Solder a wire to one of the 5V testpoints, and run it into your multimeter
  • Solder a wire to the 5Vsw testpoint and attach it to the output (COM) from your multimeter
Picture
Documents:
alpenglow_coincellpower_schematic.pdf
File Size: 102 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

How to Buy Our Things:
​Our Storefront
Tindie Storefront
Digi-Key Marketplace
Alpenglow Yarn (our yarn tools)


© 
2018-2022 Alpenglow Industries
Stay in Touch:
About Us
Blog
Contact Us
Newsletter
  • Store
    • Through-Hole Soldering Kits
    • SMT Soldering Kits
    • Tools and Accessories
    • Solderless Kits
    • Seasonal Blinkies
    • Programmable Kits for Makers
    • Textile and Yarn Tools
    • All Alpenglow Products
    • Bright Wearables
    • Makerbytes Soldering Kits
  • About
  • Blog
  • Instructions
    • How To Solder
    • Soldering Kits
    • Solderless Kits
    • Build A Blob
    • Tools
    • Coin Cell Power
    • SwitchTrick
    • SMT Garden
    • Foxy Pride
    • FUnicorn
    • Krampus
  • Contact