We’re working on a project that has a battery backup, but we don’t have any more coin cell holders on hand. No problem, we remember seeing a double pin header used for this. But when we tried to shove the CR2032 battery in between the pins it was a no-go. We could swear we’d featured a project that does this but couldn’t find it here at Hackaday. After much searching we came up with the Guerrilla battery holder which is seen on the left. No wonder it wasn’t working, the CR1212 in that picture is a much smaller package. So we figured we’d have to come up with something else, until inspiration struck.
There must be some other way to configure the pin header to work with a fatter cell body. On the right you can see that a diagonal orientation works like a charm. Join us after the break for a couple of close-ups of that connector and our thoughts on using this with a variety of different cells.
To make this connector two pins were removed from the 2×2 pin header, leaving room for the CR2032 battery to fit nicely on an angle. We also centered the remaining two pins in the plastic body to make enough of a tail to seat well in the breadboard. Now that we’ve done this, it should be simple to make it work with any coin cell. A bit fatter package might work with the center two pins removed from a 2×3 header, or on an angle with just two diagonally oriented pins on a 2×3 header. Give it a try with your battery of choice. It might just get you through the prototyping phase until it’s time to put in another parts order.
Filed under: tool hacks
