BooSTick - small AA voltage booster

February 2, 2016: The Rev 3 boards arrived and they look good. I have posted new pictures, and I will be updating my Tindie store with this new design. Overall, I think it's much better than the previous revisions. I didn't realize before that I could put all the components under the battery and not interfere with the breadboard. Now that I've seen it, it makes perfect sense.

January 20, 2016: I just can't stay away from this project for some reason. I realized the board was way too big so I put the boost circuit on the bottom side and shrunk the board by almost a factor of 2. I think it's done now. I still called it Rev 3 because I had forgotten I did a full rev roll when I fixed the via problem before. I'm not going to re-revision it now :)

So Rev 3 files are on this project page, along with the BOM. I haven't tested this yet, but I'm pretty sure it should be good. I'll test it at some point soon and report back.

Dec. 28, 2015: Oops. Rev 2 files came back and there was a via shorting to a trace. It was a dead power to ground short. It was simple to fix on the boards, but in case anyone else is looking at these files, I wanted to fix it. It's been fixed on the project page by uploading Rev 3.

This marks the end of the project. I was able to get 250 mA out of the output at 5V and 350 mA at 3.3 V. This is more power than an AA can source for any more than 20 minutes or so, so I wouldn't recommend running it this hard. It's been a nice little project, and I'm glad it worked out. It's available for sale on Tindie. Link is in the project description.

December 5, 2015: I got the rev 1 boards back and they worked, but the maximum current was only about 100 mA. Although I had used the same layout as I had used in a previous project, it really didn't do well at high current. The output voltage would drop. I have corrected the issue by following the layout guidelines in the datasheet to a T. The new files are posted on the project page.

I plan to order some rev 2 boards and try again.

October 10, 2015: I spent some time making the EagleUp model of the board and putting it in the pictures. I like how it looks.

October 8, 2015: I was surprised at the interest in this design. I didn't intend to finish it, but since people seem to like the idea, I finally did. I'll try to post the Gerbers on here at some point.

Does anyone want a board? I can make an order if people are interested.