Developing Safer Alternatives to Lithium Batteries

Researchers Andong Liu (left) and Dian-Zhao Lin perform experiments in Yayuan Liu’s battery lab.
CREDIT: WILL KIRK / JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY via Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University and the Toyota Research Institute have teamed up to research and develop better batteries. Utilizing new AI tools, the researchers tested combinations to determine what will work well and ultimately be a safe alternative to lithium ion batteries.

The research team focused specifically on using electrolytes for fluoride-ion batteries, an emerging alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Such electrolytes for batteries are not the type found in sports drinks, but the concept is similar. They’re both liquids containing charged particles, but while sports drinks include minerals natural to the body, battery electrolytes contain chemicals dissolved in a solvent that allows electrical charges to move through a battery.

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New Products 09/05/2026

We’ve got the New nEw NEW for you right here

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This week we debuted 1 New Product.

Adafruit TMF8806 Time of Flight Distance Sensor – 10mm to 5m – STEMMA QT / Qwiic

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Visit www.adafruit.com/new for more info.

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The Business Card That Lights Up Without Batteries

Kevin Tang made this circuit board business card with an NFC chip and LEDs. One nifty trick of the card is that it’s battery-less; when tapped to a phone, in addition to sharing your info, the card will draw power and light up the LEDs!

 

Here’s what’s actually happening, and it took me a while to stop finding it magical (I haven’t, really). An NFC phone doesn’t just listen for a tag—it broadcasts a strong radio field to power the tag, because the tag has no battery either. The chip in a normal NFC sticker wakes up on that borrowed energy just long enough to answer, then goes dark the moment the phone leaves. What I didn’t appreciate until I built one is that some chips will hand you the leftover power on a pin, to do whatever you want with. NXP’s datasheet lists a typical harvested output of about 5 milliamps at 2 volts under one test setup^[2]—not much, but plenty to light an LED, or blink a low-power sensor, or wake a tiny microcontroller for a fraction of a second.

Learn more!

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Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 oscilloscope

A Tektronix TDS7104 oscilloscope picked up for $300 at the Silicon Valley Flea Market was the starting point for a detailed refurbishment. The scope is a 4-channel, 1 GHz instrument with a 10 Gs/s maximum sample rate on one channel, running Windows 2000 Pro Embedded on a RadiSys NLX motherboard with an 850 MHz Celeron.

It powered up on arrival, then hung at the BIOS with a CMOS battery error.

Replacing the CR2032 fixed the boot. The dim screen turned out to be gamma settings in Windows, not a failing backlight. The 6 GB IBM Travelstar drive had corrupt sectors, so it was imaged immediately and swapped for a 32 GB mSATA SSD on an IDE adapter. Cloning the image to the SSD failed with a registry error, so Windows 2000 was reinstalled from scratch.

That meant a replacement CD-ROM drive, a bootable USB stick made with WinSetupFromUSB, and Plop Boot Manager loaded from the scope’s own floppy drive. Boot time to first waveform dropped from 2m50s to 1m35s. The post also covers driver extraction, firmware v2.5.5, and the license key scheme.

See the video below and more on tomverbeure.github.io and content on GitHub.

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Raspberry Pi 5 Cyberdeck – DIY Handheld with Powerbank #3DThursday #3DPrinting

MadHias shares:

A DIY handheld cyberdeck designed by the maker specifically for their own Raspberry Pi 5 (not based on Compute Modules, which are more expensive). High-resolution display for actual work capability. Powerbank battery (5V 3A) with the option to swap in the official Pi power supply for heavy loads (no unscrewing required). Free access to Mini HDMI ports for external monitor connection. Used for network analysis, software deployment, and programming. By MadHias

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2599635-raspberry-pi5-cyberdeck

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

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ESP32 38-Pin WLED Case – Snap-Fit for ESP32-WROOM DevKit #3DThursday #3DPrinting

Shared by drathbone on MakerWorld:

Snug snap-fit case for an ESP32-WROOM 38-Pin devkit USB-C. Hole at the back for a cable (can easily fit a 5mm wide 3-core or anything similar).

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Case comprises of a base, with room for pins and cables, a tray for the ESP32 USB-C to sit in, and a click-lock lid. Lid secures nice and tight, and the board is a perfect fit.

Download the files and learn more

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

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Manly Third Hand – Oversized Helping-Hand for Serious Work #3DThursday #3DPrinting

hypnoziil shares:

Helping hand. Simply needed a tool and all others were wimpy and did not scale up well – so made my own, can be mounted with M6 bolt or screw.

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/377279

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

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