Portable jump starters: A dubious primary use case, but not a total waste

While its vehicle battery resurrection skills are uncertain at best, this device also offers other useful abilities.

Two-plus years back, within my teardown of my PowerStation PSX3:

which I described at the time as being:

…(among other things) a portable recharger and jump-starter of vehicles’ cells. It’s also a portable tire inflater. And it’s an emergency light and USB power source, too…

I took advantage of the opportunity to also editorially “rip” into three newer solid-state and Li-ion battery-based versions of the same concept:

I tried three of these widgets, one claiming to deliver 1200 A of “peak” cranking juice:

Another spec’ing 1500 A:

And a third that promised to deliver 2000 A:

They all promptly went back to Amazon as full-refund returns. Now granted, if someone had left their interior dome light on too long and the battery was drained too low to successfully turn over the engine but still had some “life” one of these might suffice…And I’ll grant them one other thing: they’re certainly small and light.

But 2000 A of cranking current? Or even 1500 A? Mebbe for a fraction of a second, the time necessary to drain an intermediary capacitor, but not long enough to resurrect a significantly drained battery. Therefore, the quotes I put around the word “peak” earlier. Such products exemplify the well-worn saying, “mileage may vary”. Give me an old-school lead acid battery instead, any day!

Regarding my “They all promptly went back to Amazon as full-refund returns” comment, while that was my original intent, I didn’t end up fully actualizing it. The “1200 A” and “1500 A” variants indeed did get shipped back to the retailer. But, curiosity-motivated, I decided to keep the “2000 A” model, Spanarci’s ZETA2000, around if for no other reason than as a future teardown candidate.

Calling Cupertino…

That future is today. As usual, I’ll start with some outer box shots (sparing you the blank sides), as usual accompanied by a 0.75″ (19.1 mm) diameter U.S. penny for size comparison purposes:

Although my skepticism about the device’s jump-starting potential is already obvious at this early point in the writeup, I was admittedly impressed by the aesthetics and overall packaging of the product. Dare I even say it was Apple-reminiscent?

The cleverly labeled “Never Say Never” envelope, reminiscent (at least to me) of SpaceX’s three autonomous spaceport drone ships (i.e., floating rocket booster landing pads), “Of Course I Still Love You”, “Just Read the Instructions” and “A Shortfall of Gravitas”, contains literature bits:

Gee, I wonder what’s inside this translucent plastic sleeve?

To stretch the suspense, I’ll temporarily set it aside and investigate the lower box level instead:

Within is the to-vehicle battery cable harness, conveniently accompanied by USB-A-to-USB-C and USB-C-to-USB-C cables useful both for recharging the device’s internal battery pack and for powering other connected devices. Hold that thought:

Here’s the male connector at the end of the cable harness…

Burlesque finale

And here’s what it plugs into…

at out dissection patient, finally unswathed for its reveal. Top first:

Here’s the front:

Underneath the rubberized flap labeled “INPUT OUTPUT” at the right end are, likely unsurprisingly, first a bidirectional USB-C PD 30-W connector used for both device charging and for charging/powering another tethered device, such as a smartphone. The other, USB-A in form factor, is unidirectional (output-only) for similar tethered device “juicing” purposes.

Onward. Left side:

Rear; under this flap, cryptically (ha!) labeled “JUMPER CABLE” is the battery-cable harness connector you saw earlier:

And what the heck is that on the right side? A multi-LED strip, creating a 300-lumen four-mode (50% and 100% brightness stable, and both SOS and strobe pattern) flashlight, that’s what it is!

Last but not least, here’s the bottom view:

accompanied by a zoom-in of the specs:

Before opening ‘er up, I’ll note a few other feature set nuances. Like the conventional (i.e., AC-powered) solid-state charger that I tore down earlier this month, it supports various safety features such as short-circuit and “reverse” protection:

That said, there’s also “FORCE” support for dead cells and daring users:

The teardown’s the thing…

And now, let’s dive inside. Zoom back out on that earlier bottom overview shot and you’ll discern eight round rubber pieces, one in each corner and two more both at top and bottom:

I bet you can guess what comes next:

Eureka! Screw heads (trust me, they’re there, deep inside the recessed dimness)!

And what comes after that, dear readers? You got it right:

Dare I draw another analogy to Apple craftsmanship? Seriously, I’m impressed with the neatness and overall robustness of the insides, too!

Here’s the inside of the case topside:

…wherein I’ll detail the insides of the thing

And the overview that’s likely of greater interest to all of you!

Dominating the landscape, aside from the display, that is:

is the largest IC on this side, at center (horizontally) and toward the bottom (vertically). It’s Holtek’s HT67F489 8-bit RISC microcontroller, unsurprisingly with an integrated LCD controller and also containing (among other things) 8 Kwords of flash memory (4 Kwords on the more modest HT67F488 sibling, which the datasheet informs me (PDF) has been discontinued, anyway), 256 bytes of RAM and 64 bytes of EEPROM (none on the HT67F488). Also note two mode-select switches at far right, which mate to rubberized front panel buttons.

Let’s get that PCB out, shall we? Three screws hold it in place:

Guess what comes next?

In addition to noticing the now-absent screws (and their previously visible heads) in the next photo, I’d also like to draw your attention to the smaller but still-square IC to the right of the aforementioned HT67F489. It’s Southchip Semiconductor Technology’s SC2001 USB-PD controller. Given what you already know about the capability of the USB-C connector on the front of the device, this chip’s presence and functions shouldn’t be a surprise.

Here goes nothing:

My, what a big power source you have…

At left is the 44.4 Wh lithium polymer battery pack:

To its right is a beefy Sanyi Seiko SEV8-P-112DM 4-pin high-power relay:

soldered to a mini-PCB:

And the remainder of the compartment mostly consists of a bunch of now-disconnected wire harnesses:

The destination of one of them was, I admit with no shortage of chagrin, initially identity-baffling to me, until I pulled it out. See that gold-colored half-oval to the far right?

Oh yeah. The LEDs. Duh on me:

Underneath that large green region on the PCB underside is, as far as I can feel, nothing notable save for mounting-bracket sites and solder points related to the LCD on the other side:

The PCB-mounted speaker in one corner delivers a loud “beep” tone if, for example, you’ve got your to-battery connections reversed:

The one next to it is “just” an inductor (L1 is peeking out from the PCB under the white glue):

It, along with the rest of the components surrounding it (and some of those on the other side), implements a largely unmemorable power management subsystem.

In closing, I’ll share a side view of the USB-C and USB-A connectors; since the PCB is upside-down from its normal operating orientation, so are they:

…the better to incinerate you with, my dear

With that, I’ll close for today. Speaking of closing, I’ll keep the device disassembled for a while post-publication of this teardown. Then I’ll carefully reassemble it in the hopes of resurrecting it. If you smell smoke, see flame, or hear a loud “boom”, you’ll know my efforts didn’t succeed.

—Brian Dipert is the associate editor, as well as a contributing editor, at EDN.

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