Replacement:KIT-10094. This has been replaced with a new version. This page is for reference only.
The MintyBoost kit from Adafruit Industries 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.
The charger circuitry and 2 AA batteries fit into an Altoids gum tin, and will run your iPod for hours, 2.5x more than you'd get from a 9V USB charger! You can use rechargable batteries too.
Kit comes un-assembled and is suitable for beginners. Some soldering tools are necessary but even if you've never soldered before it should be pretty easy.
Tested to work with: iPod nano/mini/photo/video/shuffle, iPhone (except 3Gs - see FAQ link below), Blackberry, iPaq, Creative MP3 players, Zune, OpenMoko, Android G1, PSP, Treo, Garmin GPS, iRiver, etc...Please see a full listing at Minty Boost webpage to see if your device is tested to work before purchasing.
We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
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hi, i work with adafruit - the 3Gs is much pickier about the dataline biasing than the other iPods, for many years we did fine with 100K pullups, but then Apple had to come along and ruin it for all of us :)
there is a lot of information in the FAQ, you could solder on extra resistors to make it work with the 3Gs
http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/faq.html
we will send an email to sparkfun so they include this in the text above.
This is version 2, it looks like. When do you suppose you'll have the new v3?
It's on order. We will have it on the site when we get it in.
Anyone know why this doesn't work for the iPhone 3GS? If it's because it's not recognized as an official Apple charger, you can use 4 resistors to bias the D+/D- USB pins to trick the phone. Just a thought.
There's also a blog post about it at the adafruit blog:
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/02/08/using-the-iphone-3gs-with-a-mintyboost/
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