sudomod

I was searching this forum but could not find many people using 4500 batteries instead of the flatter battery packs. I was thinking that by using these batteries the battery compartment would need little adaptations which is nice and I could quickly replace them for continuous play while the other set is recharging. Since they are 3.7v I was thinking about just wiring them in parallel and using a boost converter to get the required voltage.

Possibly even charging them internally using something like this (although it looks a little sketchy to me) http://www.ebay.com/itm/2Pcs-1S-3-7V-3A ... 2364903669.

My main questions for people who also had this idea or even tried it are: do you run into space issues inside they Game Boy case and are there other drawbacks? How do you charge the cells, in an external charger or internally (and how)?

Since I found a cheap 14500 battery (http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-7V-14500-2500 ... r090izSRMQ) on Ebay and one of those charger protection board I listed in the previous post, I bought some to investigate the actual milliamp hour rating and charging/discharging. Might take a few weeks for the parts to arrive but I will update once everything has arrived.

Let me know how you make out, I am also planning on installing 4 AAA (1200 mah 1.2 v each ) Rechargeable NiMH batteries in my next build.

@Thump52 I definitely will keep this post up to date!

Did some tests with the battery I received using a USB power meter and a load and as I somewhat expected the capacity is way off the listed 2500mAh. I get only around 300mAh out of these cells.

Found another set of four of these for only $3.77 http://www.ebay.com/itm/4x-2500mAh-TR14 ... 2975362169 with the same results... still looking for batteries with a better capacity.

First had the idea of wiring everything in parallel, using four separate charging circuits and a step-up converter but for the sake of simplicity and saving some space in the Gameboy case I think I will wire them in series and use this charging circuit http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PCS-4S-6A-Li-i ... 2966758016. Although it only mentions the 18650 battery, I don't really see why it would not work with the 14500 variant since they charge on the same voltage.

Just a regular buck converter which can convert a range of 10v - 20v to 5v should do the trick of stepping down the voltage sine four 14500 batteries "should" only vary 11v and 17v.

Just came across these batteries on Banggood https://www.banggood.com/nl/2PCS-Sanyo- ... 11043.html. For around $20.00 you have four 850mAh capacity ones, which do seem to hold this capacity according to the reviews. Therefore having a total of 3400mAh, which should be plenty.

Will test some more using different charging circuits (and battery level indicators) using the el cheapo ones from eBay before ordering these though.

EDIT:
Found another set of batteries on AliExpress, which according to the reviews have a capacity of between 700mAh - 900mAh and are under $10,00! https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4Pcs-Trs ... 63003.html

Any updates on this? I have some of the KeepPower 14500 800mAh batteries with built-in protection circuits slowly coming from China. Thinking about using them in a Gameboy Advance Pi build.

This charger also look intriguing... though I'm curious if it'd be OK to charge 2 batteries at once..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/5V-2A-Charge-Di ... 2791565034

Any update on the 14500 lipo's? Just getting ready for a build and trying to decide on a battery pack. If this set up works, it would be really nice to quickly swap out batteries when they go low.

Everyone needs to be aware that the maximum possible rating of a 14500 is about 900mA. Anything listing higher than that is straight up lying.

Regarding charging/using. Since they're standard LION, the PowerBoost can handle them if you wire them all up in parallel (basically one big 3.7v battery). Adafruit even sells something like this with a 3x 18650 config. As long as your cells have similar internal resistance, and very similar charge levels when joined (ie, don't use them like AA's and mix 'n match). You'll need to create a joined "pack".