Lithium Polymer Batteries pack a lot of power in a small package. But they can be tricky to charge safely. The Adafruit LiPo Chargers all provide a charging cycle designed to safely charge 3.7v Lithium Polymer cells. But what if your project needs more than 3.7v?
Simply pumping more voltage into a multi-cell pack is risky. If the cells become unbalanced, some will end up with more of a charge than others. When put into service, the cells with the higher charge will end up working harder than the other cells. This will have an adverse effect on the capacity of the pack. Over time, it can result in damage and/or failure of one or more cells. And LiPo failures have been known to be quite spectacular.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
