Dear Nerds,

I am sending two battery packs (including charge circuit & DC-DC step up to 5.5V) to you today, one has 650mAh 3.7V capacity, the other one has 400mAh, 3.7V capacity. These li-poly batteries are the ones I bought for prototype. For my project in production, I will use 1500mAh 3.7V li-poly battery, which is a little bit bigger - 60mm x 50mm x 5mm .

You can plug in USB mini cable to the USB socket to charge the battery from the PC (the LED will turn on). The data lines are available on the USB socket, you need to be a bit careful of soldering wires onto it. For power up your PIC/eeprom, I'd think you better use a proper LDO regulator - like the AMS1117 - step down 5V to 3V3; because the battery outputs anywhere between 3.6V to 4.2V directly.

Regards,
Xing

Any day now, we should have a conclusion to the debate "lipos - good, bad or ugly?"

As coding for the ScoreSure Golf Pro game score keeping device comes to a close (a few more days testing should see it finished) thoughts are already turning to enclosures and presentation.

The initial idea was to place a PP3 battery (or block of 4xAAA batteries) alongside one edge of the circuit board, effectively placing the screen in the middle of the device (think original Game Boy Advance handhelds). Even with a relatively bulky battery pack, the overall footprint would still be quite small



Maplin stock a handheld enclosure with battery compartment which, on first appearance looks like a perfect fit for the PCB. The only issue is that, in a plain black oblong shaped box, it might look a little "plain".



However, such enclosures also include a recess on the front panel, which is ideally suited to adding your own keypad/graphic. Robot Steve has designed a range of prototypes for the ScoreSure range of devices (each type of device could be housed in a similar enclosure, each with a differing facia).



Even though it's very early days, such designs are very encouraging.
There are still a few decisions which may alter the enclosure requirements (e.g. whether using a 7.4v rechargeable lipo battery and USB charging circuit, in place of AAA rechargeables is a suitable option) but hopfully it won't be too long before we're back to etching circuit boards and making up prototypes to actually try out on the golf course!