Failed battery hack- analysis?

EdorFaus edorfaus at xepher.net
Tue Oct 11 14:27:16 EDT 2011


On 10/11/2011 07:46 AM, cenobyte at dragoncrypt.com wrote:
>>> Does it matter that I touched both color wires of each one to
>>> the terminals?

> This may be my problem. When I cut one strand of wire, there are already
> 2 types of wire, copper and red/green. Maybe I should use THOSE 2
> instead of 2 separate strands of 2?

Let me see if I understand you correctly: you have two lengths of 
headphone wire, both of them with two wires in it (one not-insulated 
plain copper, and one insulated (with a color)), and you have connected 
both wires of one length to + on the battery and + on the Ben, and both 
wires of the other length to - on the battery and - on the Ben? And 
neither length is connected to the other?

If so, this should not be a problem in itself, as long as there is an 
electrical connection - but you should only really need one wire for 
each of + and -, so you could instead use just one length and e.g. 
connect the uninsulated wire to - on both, and the insulated one (after 
stripping some of its insulation) to + on both.

Or if you prefer to use two lengths, you could connect just one wire 
from each (e.g. the uninsulated copper wire).

In either case you need to be careful so that + and - don't touch each 
other anywhere - there must be some isolation between the two.


One thing you can try is, after connecting the wires to the battery, 
measure the other ends of the wires to see if there's a good voltage 
there. If not, there either isn't a good connection between the wires 
and the battery, or (at least one of) the wires is broken.

To figure out which wire has the problem, you can measure between the 
other end of the + wire and the - connector on the battery (or vice 
versa), if that gives a good voltage then that wire should be OK.

Once you've connected the wires to the Ben, you can measure on its 
contacts to see if there's a good voltage there - if there is, you 
should be good to go (as long as you haven't gotten + and - reversed).




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