Yes that unit might fit, might be able to just get some wire and solder the connections to a battery inside the box, the one that comes in a unit is a spring and pretty rigid material
I might have one laying around because I stripped one and soldered to a dual flat pack battery I pulled out of one of my kids busted netbook things
I bought this from DX
http://www.dx.com/p/gdw-jxs8-diy-mobile-power-18650-battery-box-set-w-usb-output-white-gray-312793
Cut the spring in half or 2/3 and you can fit protected batteries inside.
I bet it works with some other power bank as well.
For traveling I am trying to find a good one with a good flashlight integrated, and something to show the remaining power level, so something like that
http://www.amazon.com/EasyAcc®-Flashlight-Bluetooth-Headphones-Smartphones/dp/B00GAVCNZI/ref=sr_1_67?ie=UTF8&qid=1406937959&sr=8-67
Would you be willing to take a picture showing markings on the chips?
I will write it down when I get home
What you need is a good SLAP!
That’s just going too far. Just get a decent power bank and be done with it.
That thing looks like the proverbial ‘rat hole’ to me.
ETA9635 3412F, so it’s the good one I think
What are you talking about and who ?
From my experiences with power bank, they all are cheap made in china that will die sooner or later, either the pcb or the cheap 18650 put in there.
But I want to have one for traveling in case I go to an exotic country and a loss of power, or in an emergency backpack where I will put a 2x18650 one
ETA9635 (good chip), nice. Thanks.
Same here, ordered from Buyincoins and my units(I supposed both of them, checked only on one of them!) come with FM6316FE-CF3N14.1 chip with smaller SS14
Any idea if its a good one? It wont fit my protected 3400 green Panasonic cells and I dont currently own any unprotected ones.
I bought fou of them from eBay seen the price point, to leave them in the car, the carry-on, etc for some emergency charge of ecig or phone.
No Joy. Used during Christmas to illuminate some LEDs on a window far from any main socket, then back to the junk drawer.
First, they have a 0.16 mA standby power consuption, which increases to 0.5 mA and up when the room is very warm (increase is due to a high capacity-low voltage ceramic capacitor, whose working voltage is less than 5 volts, and leaks like crazy).
Second, as others have noted, there is no lower voltage threshold, it bricks every and each unprotected 18650 it may happen to be fit in it. When I used them, I had to use some 18640 protected cells (a special shortened battery design for a very specific flashlight). Normally protected 18650 have truble fitting inside. And think, the protection circuitry of protected 18650 is not meant to be set off at each use, since normal pure (non-hybrid) Lithium Cobaltite cells are bricked at 3.0 Volts!
Third, mine has a charge LED (LED and charging current turns off at 4.20 Volt), but no discharge indicator. You don’t know if the charger is providing power if not for the indication on the charged device. The PCB has empty pads for one LED, one transistor and three resistors, which (I guess) is the power-on indication circuitry. Half-cent of dollar of missing parts, make me do a close guess of the profit made by the manufacturer, for something sold for three British pounds plus shipping.
Fourth, at 0.5 Amp load the Schotty diode has a forward voltage drop (checked with a scope) an hair less than 0.6 volts, to the point I tought it was silicon-silicon and not metal-silicon. No, it is metal-silicon of the worst possible quality, because at 1 mA direct current it produces a forward drop of 0.45 Volts. Therefore, the diode goes out of SOA when the load takes more than 300 mA.
By translating some chinese forums, it seems this power bank was meant to be used to charge soapbar phones using those ubiquitous unmarked blue 18650, which (in China) are used for almost everything.
I have a bunch of them removed from “20.000 mAh” power banks paid less than 10 US dollar each… they are 900-1000 mAh capacity, cathode 20% cobalt and 80% manganese. Low self discharge and internal resistance, provides 50 (fifty) full cycles before almost sudden failure (quality brand 18650 looses 0.04% capacity at each cycle). They have no PTC or other thermal safeguards. At the end of their uselful life, they just refuse to charge, with internal resistance climbing to ten ohm or so: No firework, just silent death. Their particular chemical structure makes them capable of going down to 1.5 Volt at each available cycle with no apparent damage. Not great performance in terms of capacity or life-cycle, but they sells for peanut. They pair well with this power bank, tho’.
I have seen on sale some DIY PCBs of the same size and socket layout used in this bank; it would be nice to swap the existing crappy PCBs with a proper designed circuit, as I like the plastic two-color box with a sliding door (even if it is made of poly-styrols, sort of a dense foam, not real plastic). I have been tempted to add the missing part and replace the underrated ones, but I avoided it as it would take a full day in the lab, just to get an half-Amp, one-of-a-kind power bank, just as the one selling in ASDA for 10 pounds; it has the same identical shape of our crappy one, a built-in 2600 mAh Samsung battery, all LEDs and safeguards, and it is made of metal. On comparison, I paid this crummy thing three times its real value!
Also the supplied USB cable is useless. 4 out of 5 cables failed after few months, it also doesn’t allow more than 0,4A… High internal resistance
Yesterday received a 1x18650 battery box from BIC. It’s FM6316CE based. Battery charged fine. But when charging my smartphone from it the battery got quite warm and the PCB even warmer. I was too scared to leave it connected during the night so disconnected when going to bed. Is this normal?
What kind of phone? The FM6316CE datasheet claims 80-90% efficiency for the boost-converting function. With a phone that draws 1A at 5V, thats 0.5-1W of heat. In my tests that skinny lead to the negative terminal is going to cause some power loss. There is also the resistance of the cell itself, how old is it?
The phone is Nexus 4. As for battery it’s a laptop-pull Samsung 2600mAh. My guess 4-5 years old from which 2-3 years it spent in a drawer. Voltage was 2.0V when I pulled it. Charges with no heat at all in same PB. As did another with same voltage from same pull only using TP4056 board.
Pardon me, but how much heat is 1W? 
Looks like the nexus 4 draws ~1A and has a ~2,100 mAh battery. That cell probably isn’t enough to charge it fully, so I’d guess that it will still be pulling close to 1A as the powerbank reaches exhaustion, that’s going to draw closer to 2A from the cell, increasing power loss due to resistance, plus the boost converter efficiency will decline as cell voltage drops. So, the rate of heat generation is going to increase throughout the discharge of the powerbank into the phone.
As for how much heat 1W is, not much, but by the end of the cycle, its going to be more than that, and its not a surprise that things are noticeably warmer. Whether its too warm is hard to say without a quantitative measure. People have different sensitivities to heat/pain, thicker skin, etc.
Looks like what you are saying is true. Yesterday I’ve tested the PB one more time. The battery stayed cool till about the end of charge then it got warm. N4 was drawing 700-800mA according to charge widget. The PB got charged to full (well at least the red LED was no longer lit) evening before and it only charged the N4 to about 84% from about 15%. Then the blue led started blinking and the phone was waking up endlessly. 18650 measured 3.14V after. Too bad it didn’t occur to me to check the voltage before connecting it to the phone.
Long story short, it seems to me that all those cheapest power banks aren’t worth the hassle. At least the FM6316CE based ones. I have one more cheap 1x18650 PB on the way with a PCB that looks a bit different. Maybe I’ll have better luck with it.
Meanwhile I will try your mod. Maybe it will improve the situation a bit.
The port of 5V-IN of my power bank is broken.I tried to repair it but it was a 5 pin 5V-IN port and it’s one of the pin was broken.I searched nearby shops but could not get the mentioned piece.Please help me as soon as possible.
Any info about this powerbank? I bought it from Banggood
From the pictures below can anyone confirm if the powerbank is safe for usage?
Thank you
I have a couple and they seem OK based on very basic tests I did: Unprotected batteries all fit OK. Charges battery to about 4.19V. I left it attached for extra 5 hours and the voltage did not increase (unlike the Miller unit I received which was heading for 4.28 after the same time). Charged my mobile phone with it (outputs about 0.9 Amp)
When not in use the drain from the battery appeared negligible (few microamp).
I got 5 of those tubular power banks from Banggood. Mine are exactly the same version as in post #142 above.
The one I opened had a 8 pin control IC marked 134N6P (I could not find a data sheet) (was TP4213-read EDIT2 below) and a 8205A mosfet.
A test with a Sanyo 18650FM 2600 mAh, a 5 Ohm load and an OLED USB tester showed me the following:
- They could not deliver the promised 1A. Two of them almost made it giving 4,5V out.
- I took the best one for a 10 Ohm load test with the Sanyo battery and got 1260 mAh out at a stable 5.05V and 0.48A. That is 5.05 x 1.26 = 6,36 Wh.
I assume that 8 Wh was utilized from the Sanyo battery (can hold up to 9Wh), stopping at around 3.1V. During discharge a steady blue light turns to blinking already at 3.7V.
- the efficiency has been around 6,36/8 = 80% , acceptable but not very good.
- The charging on that one continues past safe limits. I stopped charging at 4.25V where it was still charging with 0.3 A. That is not good.
EDIT: Another charging test with a (weak) laptop pull charged to 4.22V and stopped charging. That was fine, but the difference is strange. Anyway it is easy to open the unit and put in a battery that is charged elsewhere.
EDIT 2: I opened up another one and it had a TPower TP4213 all-in-one controller (easy to find data sheet) and no number or date on the board. The circuit was the same on both boards. Funny was, that this TP4213 was marked 134H7X. This was the only marking on the chip on the first board so I guess it also was a TP4213.