Portable Battary Bank

[QuantumKnight]

Good day all,

  Note I am still new to this and most of my project are still with the 555 chip, but I am wanting to design and build my own usb power charger to use for portable electronics.  I was hoping for someone to point me in the right direction to learn about the process from a simple breadboard circuit and then I can move on from there. I want to be able to charge the battery from an external source and then be able to charge from the battary using a usb port. If anyone can provide me a starting point for this project or simple circuits to build that will help me understand the process that I can later put it all together, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and have a nice day.

[Jon86]

If you want to build the charger from simple jellybean chips, then good luck. Someone else can help you with that
Otherwise, using a battery charger IC it's very simple. Look at what TI or any other manufacturer has available, and use the example circuit on the datasheet. The chips tend to be in SO packages, but you can just get a cheap DIP adapter and solder it on, they're very simple chips to use.
I'm assuming you want to use Li-ion batteries?

[QuantumKnight]

Thank you Jon for you reply

Yes I am wanting to use Li-ion, I will look at battery charger IC as you suggested. My next question should be should I choose the IC on the input and output power or an IC that deals with thermal regulation to prevent the battary from getting too hot? Thank you again.

[Jon86]

Thermal regulation is important in some commercial products, but it's not really necessary at all in your project.
You probably want to choose an IC that has an output current of 1A or less, that almost guarantees that your battery will not get too hot.