iHP-140 with 2100mAh & original battery backup

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

I've done it!

I've managed to rig up my iRiver so that I have 2 batteries, one main and one reserve. That's some serious battery life I've got now.
Internally there's an upgraded 2100mAh Newer Technology battery and externally (taped to the back) the original iRiver battery with a switch between them.

I connected the positive terminals of both batteries to the positive terminal of the iRiver, and the negative terminals to opposite ends of a switch, with the iRiver negative terminal in the centre.

I can switch from one to the other when the first one goes flat (which won't be in the near future!)
And I can charge either of them in the usual way too, as the iRiver thinks there's only the one battery (the one the switch is set to).

Originally I wanted to have the external battery pluggable but I couldn't find a plug small enough & decided seeing as the battery is thin enough to fit in the case along with the iRiver I thought I may as well hard wire it on.

And the switch is quite discrete and is neatly accessible through the gap in the case.

This is a good set up for going to festivals and recording bands etc. Where there's no access to mains power for a few days.

Thanks to everyone who helped me do this.

[NPswimdude500]

let me be the first to say that that looks horrendous.

A+ for ingenuity

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Lol well yes the photos aren't very flattering. It does actually look better than that and I've removed the gaffa tape and replaced it with electrical tape which is much more discreet. I took the photos like that to show how I did it.

IMO the iHP is an ugly looking machine anyways. I bought it for functionality, otherwise I would've bought an H10 or dare I say it, an iPod.

[seadzz]

About the only way it could look less attractive is to have made a case for the battery out of plywood or the tops of old cigar boxes. The intent is there but from the looks department it will not prove to be a babe magnet.

You should keep in mind that punture wounds to these batteries may not be good and the stuff inside may be a tad toxic.

sfz

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Pah. If this is all the encouragement I'm gonna get for innovation I'll take my inventions elsewhere. I'm happy with it. And I like cigar boxes. So nurr.

The battery won't be in danger of getting punctured while it's in the case. I appreciate the warning though.

It's true it does look ugly. So what? It's for recording and listening to music on, not for looking at.

[abramelin]

I think its f*ing great (I know its only jesting but who cares how it looks, not me). People have been talking about how to do this for ages and perhaps some on this board even said it wasn't possible! Perhaps now they will eat their brown leather iriver cases.

I would really like to do this - I have upgraded to the 29hr battery and still have my original battery hanging around. Only problem is - I have absolutely no idea at all how this set up works.

No, i havn't searched - at all! - so direct me if I am missing something- but are you - Cheatah - going to post some directions on how electronic dunces like me might have a go at something like this? Say yes.

(sorry for all the hyphens)

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Hurrah! Thanks Abramelin, I'm glad you're interested.

Well it's not outrageously complicated but it is a bit fiddly and does involve soldering and drilling a hole in your iRiver shell, so if you can handle that here goes...

By the way I didn't take any photos when I did it and don't want to disassemble it again as it's quite delicate so you'll have to use your imagination a bit.

These instructions are very detailed and are aimed at people who haven't done a lot of soldering. Apologies if it's a bit pedantic or wordy.


You need a soldering iron & solder,
A torx screwdriver to open your case,
A small slide switch with 3 contact points (the bits you solder the wires onto) -I bought mine from Maplin for less than £1.
And you need some thin wire.
And patience. Lots of it.

1) Open your case the way you did to change the battery (See H1xx Painting How to ... for how to do this)

2) Remove the molex connector from the "external" battery and cut off the red wire. Make sure the black & red wires don't touch as this will short circuit the battery. I put some electrical tape on them temporarily to help prevent this.

3) Drill a tiny hole in the silver piece of casing underneath where you plug in the 5V DC adaptor.

3) Carefully solder a piece of wire from the positive terminal of the internal battery (the red wire) and poke it through the hole you drilled in the case, then solder this to the positive terminal of the external battery (where you removed the red wire in step 2).

3) Using a soldering iron remove the Black wire from the internal battery and poke it through the hole in the case. Solder it to the centre pin of the switch.

3) Solder a short bit of wire (about 2cm) to one of the other pins on the switch. Poke it through the hole in the case and connect the other end to the negative terminal on the "internal" battery (where you removed the wire in step 3).

4) Solder the black wire from the external battery to the other remaining pin on the switch.

5) Put your iRiver back together. Be careful not to pull off the wires on the batteries and switch as you do this.

6) Stick the external battery to the outside of the back of your iRiver. I used electrical tape to do this. In fact I covered the whole battery with tape to protect it.

7) Using good quality glue CAREFULLY glue the switch the case (make sure no glue gets inside the switch or it won't work. I had this problem and had to buy a new switch and start again. This time I just used tape to hold it in place).

And there you have it! An iRiver with two batteries!
You don't neccessarily have to do things in this order, it might work better to stick the switch and external battery on first, for example.

Good luck!

[Dunno]

you guys are seriously drilling holes and making ugly mods to your players, *shakes his head in disbelief*, why not buy a 'AA external battery pack', no hacking and if you dont like it, or dont need it just unplug it, no drilling required

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Look I didn't have to tell you guys about what I've been doing.
If you don't like it you don't have to do it but please don't knock my efforts with your own preferences. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do this.

If you want to use an AA battery pack go do it, that's not what this thread is about. I tried one of those and it wasn't giving me enough power and I wanted to make use of the old battery instead of indulging in the mass consumerist "let's just get a new one instead of doing it myself" mentality.

[HeartsOfWar]

I agree with Cheatah.

He performed a rather tough mod on his Iriver and wanted to share it with the community. Obviously this mod is not for the 'common' mentality / normal caliber people, so for those who do not like it... simply move on.

There is some nice potential here... and everyone should respect that despite their opinion.

[Dunno]

Originally Posted by HeartsOfWar

He performed a rather tough mod

LOL,

I dont give a shit, just amazed....

[belly917]

Cheetah,

I'm very impressed. using an old battery as a backup battery is a good use of an older item.

My first question for you is this. when you were planning this mod, did you consider making the external battery "detachable" so that you could only attach it only when you needed it.

I don't know how much room there is underneath that corner of the body, but idealy it would be nice if you could implement another plug on the bottom that would allow you to plug in the second battery and when you do, it would disengage the internal battery. (I know that they make headphone plugs that do this)

My second question is, what would be the result of plugging the external battery into the regular power plug?

Just a thought.. your mod still rocks..

How long is the combined uptime with both batteries?

[kablex]

..... are we all getting to sound like our iPod friends
fashion fashion fashion.... lol !!!

Peace

K.

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Firstly thanks Hearts and Belly & all the others who are being encouraging about this.
(And sod off the rest of ya! )
I know it's not a perfect mod and it's just my ego that feels offended when people take the piss, but in an increasingly cynical and materialistic disposable world I think it's important to encourange innovation and experimentation, not spit on it.

Secondly, in response to Belly's questions yes it was my original plan to put a plug on the external battery. I tried it and but it was only able to charge the internal battery rather than act as a reserve, and since the internal battery is 2100mAh and the external is 1340mAh or something like that it wouldn't charge fully. In fact the first time I plugged it in it completely drained the 2100mAh battery and I thought I'd buggered it! I think it's suffering as a result of doing this and seems to discharge quicker now so I wouldn't recommend it. Also it would've meant I'd have no way of charging the external battery.

So then I thought about putting a second socket under the DC 5v in for the second battery. There isn't a lot of room, probably not enough for the same kind of socket as the DC in anyway. I'd thought exactly the same thing about the headphone socket/disengaging the default battery thing you mention but couldn't figure out how to do it and couldn't find anyone who knew. Otherwise that's definitely what I would've done instead.

I tried fitting a molex connector and socket thing (don't know the proper name) but it was really fiddly and fragile and broke off. I thought "well I'm not going to get rid of the second battery, I might as well fix it on permanently." So I stuck a switch on it instead.

Not sure how much battery life I'll get. Lots! You have to bear in mind that the reason I decided to do it in the first place (apart from being environmentally conscious and not wanting to waste the old battery) is so that I can do lots of WAV recording and take it away with me to festivals and camping trips. So I can't really give an average. It depends on how much recording I'm doing. If I was only using it to listen to mp3s it'd probably run for days!

[Astec]

My second question is, what would be the result of plugging the external battery into the regular power plug?

Ill advised as they tend to explode at 110~220 sort of voltages, but so long as its a voltage under 7v it will be ok. I dont expressly like or dislike this mod, but I have to admit there where better options! You could of rigged the old battery as an external pack like the AA and used that as the second power source and would require no hardware or body modding on the player. Plus you could charge them up separately.

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Astec, I think you misunderstand what he's saying. He's not suggesting plugging the battery into the mains! (At least I hope that's not what he means.)

He's actually suggesting the same thing as you i.e. what happens if you plug the external battery into the DC in on the iRiver, which if you read my reply doesn't work cause it doesn't charge the internal battery & you still can't recharge the external battery without the iRiver. I tried it.

Believe me, I've thought about & researched this a lot and even if you don't like this mod it works. Better than the AA pack, better than the PSP battery packs in the other thread, better than throwing away a perfectly good iRiver battery & putting up with rubbish recording/playback time.

[Cheatah... Ungowa!]

Guys, I think I've been a bit defensive in some of my responses above so sorry about that. I 'spose I was quite pleased when I figured out a way of doing it which actually works. If there is a way of having the external battery pluggable/bypass-able I'd like to know about it as that would really be a cool mod (even though it'd be too late for my iHP-140, it might still be of use to others.)

I'm going away for a few weeks from tomorrow so I won't be able to reply to any posts for a while.

I can't believe what happened in London today (yesterday). The bombings I mean. When this sort of thing goes on in the World any kind of violence or argueing really feels the wrong way to be living. Lets all try to be more supportive of each other, eh? It's fine to express opinions etc. but let's not forget the important stuff.

All the best.

Cheatah

[coreman]

Cheatah...I respect your ingenuity and initiative to take the chance with your player, that is how progress is made...remember hte first cell phones? Weighed about 5 lbs and looked like walkie talkies?

At any rate, your experiment was electrically successful and contains useful information for the next person who wants to try something similar, such as (2) dissimilar battery capacities cannot be hooked in series or one will drain the power from the other...they have to operate independently.

Clearly you were looking for electrical success and achieved it. Cosmetic success would appear to be nearly impossible...especia lly with this crowd ( ) at times!

At any rate, well done and enjoy it!

[abramelin]

I think what Cheatah has done is as groundbreaking as Hearts of War first fitting the upgraded ipod battery into the iriver. Now loads of people have done that as a direct result. Can this thread then be made sticky because a mod like this is just as important and follows on naturally from what Hearts of War did.

Thanks for the instructions, I shall have to print off and go thru them VERY carefully before drilling into my iriver (LoL! I can't believe I'm even thinking about doing that! But this is just what this forum is all about for me - people having an amazing dap, and then experimenting with it and pushing the possibilities of how we can use it. I doubt if people would do this with an ipod, but the iriver almost encourages such an approach. I think that this mod, HoWar's battery upgrade and the whole Rockbox thing all go together and show what's possible with these players.

Cheatah's put this mod out, the way of evolution is that other's may well come up with improvements, tips, cheats etc. If someone else does it, can we have some pictures to guide the rest of us. I'm up for doing this, so long as I can see just how its done. I really like the idea of using the old battery rather than it just being redundant and I'll bet lots of others on this forum do as well.

I don't give a dam how it looks but you have to admit;Seadzz's comment was bloody funny!

[abramelin]

You could of rigged the old battery as an external pack like the AA and used that as the second power source and would require no hardware or body modding on the player. Plus you could charge them up separately.

This is what a lot of people have mentioned. Is there a way, based on what Cheetah has done, of rigging up some kind of small interface betweeen the old battery and the iriver charger, so it could be used as a detachable bat-pack?

i guess this would require a receiving charge unit on the old battery plus a lead to plug it into the player itself. hm, sounds pretty complicated, but then so is what Cheetah has done. Is this the holy grail of mods?

[Astec]

Astec, I think you misunderstand what he's saying. He's not suggesting plugging the battery into the mains! (At least I hope that's not what he means.)

Yea I was fairly sure he didnt mean the mains but best to be sure ie safer than sorry...

Quote: