External battery pack

[TonyToews]

I purchased the following USB battery charger device. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/270810499131. While it doesn't charge the Vox it does keep the battery from discharging. It lasts about 12 hours with a combination of browsing the web, watching videos and being in sleep mode with Wifi enabled.

It takes about 10 hours to charge it from a 500 ma laptop USB power supply.

(I let my Vox go down to 60% of battery life. Then I plugged in this device for the next 12 hours and the Vox battery did not go down at all for the next 12 hours. Even though it stated discharging)

And, of course, you can use it to charge any USB device such as a camera. I can see this being handy for folks who take a lot of photos to carry this device and charge the battery while walking about. Of course folks could just carry a spare battery or two.

Note 1) that it uses 18650 batteries and not AA batteries like I had initially thought. As I'd never heard of 18650 format batteries before I just ignored the mention of 18650 in the eBay item. Also it doesn't explicitly state that 18650 is a battery type. (Except buried way down in the text.)

Note 2) it uses a USB mini port to charge the batteries. The Vox comes with a USB micro charger end so if you do want to charge it at the 2A rate you'll need a USB micro female to USB mini male adapter of some sort.

Note 3) mine at least did not display a red LED when the batteries were getting too low to keep the Vox going. Instead the very bright green LED just stopped glowing which was useful enough.

[oldyellr]

It says "It takes around 6-10 hours for fully charge 4x cells". Seems to me it takes a whole lot less time to charge the Vox with the supplied Kobo charger. Okay, so it's portable and you can use it out in the middle of nowhere if you don't have your charger ot any place to plug it in. Have you tried charging this device with the Kobo charger, which delivers 2 amps, not just 1/2 an amp?

My son had a double ended USB cable for a Samsung external DVD drive/writer for his netbook. It plugs into 2 USB ports, so presumable delivers 1 amp to the drive. A cable like that should charge this device twice as fast from a computer.

[TonyToews]

No, I haven't tried charging the battery pack with the Kobo charger as I don't have a mini USB male to micro USB female adapter.

Hmm, good point on the double ended cable. In fact it was hooked up to such but only one of the two ends was plugged into the USB hub. That should've occurred to me. Duhhh. I'll try that tomorrow.

[kklee]

Convenient device. For what it's worth, 18650 is a rechargeable Lithium battery type, nominally 3.6V. The number indicates the physical size, 18mm x 650mm. As a comparison, AA's are 14mm x 500mm. 18650's are physically much large than AA batteries, so I'm guessing that the description must be a mistake if you can fit AA's into it.

[TonyToews]

kklee. You lost me on your posting. What description where did I mention AA? The battery pack device does use the 18650 batteries and not the AA batteries.

[Cdesja5]

I just bought an iHome IPad USB charger (2.1 amp) for $19.99 at Winners and used with my Blackberry USB cable (instead of the Apple cable ;-) to charge the Vox. The cable is much longer than the one on the original Vox charger. As has been mentioned in several previous posts, the battery indicator does not show the right power status however I verified that it had charged by pressing the reset button inside the cover. Success!

[kklee]

Originally Posted by TonyToews

kklee. You lost me on your posting. What description where did I mention AA? The battery pack device does use the 18650 batteries and not the AA batteries.

Sorry about the confusion, I misread your post. For some reason I read it as you used AA with it.

18650 are actually quite common batteries, they're the cells used in most laptop battery packs.

[SweetMocha]

Ok I am so confused by all the posts. My husband's Kobo Vox charger got chewed up by our dog and we have gone everywhere looking for a kobo vox charger to buy but no one sells it separetly. I am in Vancouver, BC close to metrotown mall but can get anywhere if anyone knows where I can buy another kobo vox charger for my husband. Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee help!!!! He is so upset about not being able to use his kobo vox.

[mr_nobody]

Last thing we heard, you can't purchase vox chargers yet. Yeah, that's not what you want to hear and no one around here is too happy about it either...

[hpulley]

Buy a Vox for yourself?

[oldyellr]

How badly was it chewed up? The cable and usb connector can be replaced if you're okay with soldering and not just someone who twists wires together.

[lorken]

I purchased this on online a few weeks ago:

http://www.gomadic.com/kobo-ereader-...-extender.html

It uses 4 AA batteries (I use rechargeables) and so far it works fine. I have used it several times on long plane rides. The only odd thing is that I have to plug this battery pack into the vox before the vox battery goes completely dead. If the vox battery is completely dead, the vox won't start up even with the battery pack plugged in. So I usually plug it in when I'm around 30% power.

It also has an interchangeable tip, so I can use it with other devices if I choose later on.

[oldyellr]

Originally Posted by lorken

The only odd thing is that I have to plug this battery pack into the vox before the vox battery goes completely dead.

What's "completely dead"? The Vox battery indicator shows the charge in 10% increments, extrapolating between those points with a straight line on the graph. How long can you push it beyond the 10% charge warning? I'm guessing you have to plug the battery pack in ASAP after the warning. Is there a 0% warning after that, when the battery pack won't work anymore?

I see this one is for the Kobo Touch, which does not need a 2 amp charger. What does the battery level indicator show after the battery pack is plugged in?

[Kboland]

Hey SweetMocha, I went out and bought http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Techno...178282-1679670 which does charge the Vox, but doesn't properly update the software battery monitor. In order to get the battery monitor to reset yo need to pry (easy and not at all harmful to the unit ) the back of the Vox off, and press a small black reset button. There are more 'working' 3rd party chargers discussed here ---> https://getsatisfaction.com/kobo/topics/charger_for_vox

Hopefully one of these can get you buy until you are able to get a replacement from Kobo, and hopefully the next firmware update sees the support for working 3rd party chargers to be properly tracked by the software.

Cheers

[JGB]

Originally Posted by TonyToews

kklee. You lost me on your posting. What description where did I mention AA? The battery pack device does use the 18650 batteries and not the AA batteries.

18650 is an industrial cell specification. 18x65mm
They are lovely batteries, though a little scary sometimes. I'd make sure to put AW brand protected cells in that, from a reputable source not knowing how well it regulates current to each cell

As an E-cigarette vaper, I use tons of 18650s in my e-cigarette. You get what you pay for with them!
The technical term for what they do when you get one that fails is venting with flame. Which is about as exciting as it sounds(aka not fun, there's a user over on candlepowerforums who got hospitalized from a lithium cell going off) legally you can't even ship more than 3 18650s together.

That 4 pack looks neat, but honestly seems like total overkill to me. No wonder it took so long to charge, each of those cells could be up to 2800mAh.(for reference my cell phone battery is 1700).
I might try it as a charger for the 18650 cells if they were charged independantly, so I could pull a cell out to run my ecig on.
for every day use
I prefer http://www.onetruegem.com/node/32
I keep the unprotected cell as a spare, and use a good quality AW cell in it.
Single cell avoids the risks of multiple cells. Also easier to slip in a pocket.