[pct-l] Music/IPod (Brick Robbins)

[Daniel Bailey]

I am quite happy with my Sansa E280, which holds 8GB of music and has a
micro-sd slot that currently accommodates an additional 2 GB.  It also has
an FM recorder and records voice via a built in microphone.  I was surprised
at the level of quality for a built-in mic.  No, you won't be recording
concerts with it, but for speech and so forth, it's great.  The battery life
of the Sansa is right around 20 hours.

The more interesting part of this post is my back up battery source.  The
Sansa is charged via USB and while you can find a few commercial solutions
for emergency USB batteries, I recently found the "Minty Boost" charger at
http://tinyurl.com/2gy6bo.

It's basically a pair of AA batteries and a simple circuit fit made to fit
inside of an Altoids GUM tin.  It's capable of charging my Sansa almost two
times on a set of fresh batteries which means nearly 60 hours of music.
This is more than enough to last me several days.  The best part is that the
Minty Boost charger is very light (the gum tin plus a pair of AA batteries
plus a very simple circuit).

This charger will work with nearly any USB charging device, whether it is a
Sansa or an Ipod or whatever.  If you plug it into a USB port to charge, the
Minty Boost should do the trick.  The rare exception is when your device
actually needs proprietary software installed before the computer will
recognize it.  In this case, your device may not work with the Minty Boost.
The easiest way to test this is to plug your device into a USB port on a
computer that you know you've never installed software for your device.  If
it begins charging or you can browse the file system, then you're in luck.

If you look around the internet, you'll be able to find several 9V charger
kits available as well.  The AA aspect of the Minty Boost charger is
actually more efficient.  This is because USB devices charge on 5V and using
a 9V battery requires that part of the voltage be shunted to ground.  This
is essentially wasting part of your battery.  2 AA batteries together
provide 3V and this is stepped up to 5V through the simple circuit
previously mentioned.  AA batteries also provide nearly twice as much power
as they have greater Amp-hours and less internal resistance.  Finally, 9V
batteries are more expensive than AA batteries.  See more at
http://tinyurl.com/32vgsp.

The Minty Boost is sold as a kit and requires a little soldering, though it
is rated as a beginner project.  I'm not an expert at soldering and I didn't
find the kit difficult to put together.  I purchased two of the kits (I
wanted a back-up) and paid a little over $43 including S&H.

Be well,

Senator
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