Bruce Mueller needed to be off the grid for a couple of weeks this summer at the Boy Scout National Jamboree, so he converted his D-battery MagLight into a super long charging Minty Boost monster!

He shared this story about creating this project:

While cellular coverage will be good (thanks AT&T!), charging a phone will be a challenge. I was looking for a way to provide a sturdy recharging solution. After studying your battery cell information page, it became clear that a solution with 3 D cells and Mintyboost would fit the bill..

But, alas, this won’t fit in altoids tin! — Then I saw my lonely 3D Maglite flashlight. With the advent of LED torches, I don’t think I’ll ever use it as a lightsaber again, but it would make an excellent home for a mintyboost.

After taking the bulb out, breaking it and soldering in wires to power the mintyboost, all that remained was coming up with a way to hold it in the flashlight…

Fortunately, I’m the new proud owner of a Makerbot Rep2… In the attached link is my thingiverse design of a holder for the Mintyboost to put it into the head of the Maglite flashlight. It is a beautiful thing, and will keep me connected for at least a week!

And here is an excerpt of his Thingiverse from Thing 52218 description:

This bracket holds a Mintyboost from Adafruit in place of the bulb assembly in a 3-D cell Maglite Flashlight.

This thing was made with Tinkercad. Edit it online!

The Mintyboost from Adafruit is an excellent battery powered USB charger circuit. It was designed to use 2 AA cells and be housed in a mini altoid tin container. I was looking for significantly higher capacity and a rugged housing, and stumbled over my 3D cell aluminum Maglite. Removing the bulb and reflector, I created a space to hold the mintyboost board. By disassembling (breaking) a bulb, power can be drawn from the bulb socket.

Read more.

Featured Adafruit Products

MintyBoost Kit – v3.0: Make your own iPod/iPhone/GPS/etc… battery-pack and recharger! This project includes all the electronic parts necessary to build your own MintyBoost: a small & simple (but very powerful) USB charger for your iPod (or other mp3 player), camera, cell phone, and any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge. If you have a Nintendo DS/GBA or a PSP you can buy charger cables from us, too. The charger circuitry and 2 AA batteries fit into an small space such as an Altoids gum or mint tin, and will run your iPod for hours, 2.5x more than you’d get from a 9V USB charger! You can use rechargeable batteries too. (read more)