CR2032 Shrink Wrap Battery Pack

Inexpensive and compact, CR2032 coin cell batteries provide an excellent source of energy for applications that require a limited amount of power. One challenge with using them is that you need to attach leads to either side. If you only need one of these cells, snap-in holders are commonly available, but if you haven’t planned that far ahead or need to use several in series, things become a little trickier.

My solution, seen in the video below, is to use large diameter shrink wrap tubing in order to hold several of these cells together, slipping wires in at the top and bottom of each assembly. While easy in concept, getting a good connection between the wires and the coin cells took some experimentation. Here, each wire lead is first stripped in an extremely long fashion, then rolled over the plastic insulation. They can then form a good connection with the batteries, held down with heat shrink.

Once the wires are hot glued into place, the battery packs form a nice low power supply for 3–12 volts — perhaps even more!

One application for this type of battery pack could include use inside a compact handheld controller like a Wii Nunchuck, an idea for which is seen in the middle of the video. As the 6–7 volts produced by two of these cells is perfect to power many Arduino and other similar compact dev boards, this could also work well for applications that only have to run for a short amount of time, such as intermittent data logging.