• kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    A few of us electronics hobbyists have been collecting them (when found discarded on the street) to harvest the battery for re-use in other projects.

    .

    Yes they’re nasty, but I pick them up with a dog poo bag and clean them before cracking them open to get the battery.

    • daed@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I was just thinking about this the other day. Any ideas for projects to use them with?

        • Corkyskog
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          11 months ago

          futuristic caltrops

          I am dying… 🤣

          Also they all have to be 0.1 v from each other otherwise the “whole thing goes south” sounds scary and is now kind of making me rethink my plan of putting up collection boxes outside of high schools and building a battery for my house out of them.

          • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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            11 months ago

            Once it’s balanced and wired it’s impossible to be imbalanced again though. The risk is only during initial assembly and you accidentally includes an empty cells among fully charged cells.

            building a battery for my house

            Uh yeah that’s totally different league than building a power bank though.

            • adrian783@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              this is only true if they’re 1s. but all bets are off if you have cell groups. God forbid you use them to make anything remotely useful like an ebike battery or home power storage.

              • Corkyskog
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                11 months ago

                What happens then? This warning might be useful for me in the future lol

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I guess that’s the silver lining, free batteries for anyone willing to deal with a dirty object.

      They’re also a prime starting supply for lithium battery recycling plants so they can get things figured out before they have to deal with car packs at volume.

    • sibannac
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      11 months ago

      I have a small collection from friends that use the disposables. What do you use them for? I had the idea to make keychain flash lights or a battery conversion of some kind.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        At the moment I have several strings of LED Christmas lights on various houseplants that are powered by salvaged batteries.

        Also a dollar store magnetic “spotlight” that I modified and have mounted to the chest freezer in the basement so I can see what’s in there.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You can also use them as mini fog machines if you hook up a small pump. I build dioramas and have been experimenting with them.