:F_P:

Today I became a hardware geek. I wanted a portable way of charging my Zire 72s palm pilot. I figured I would be able to find some gizmo to pop a few rechargable AA batteries in and have a usb plug go to the palm. Searching around I found this. The problem is that it holds 4 AA cells and rechargable AA cells are 1.2 and not 1.5 volts. Which means that I wouldn't get up to the 5 volts needed to charge a palm. So plan B. While googling I found things like this site which show one how to make a charger out of a nine volt and a usb cable. So off to Radio Shack I go to do something I have always wanted to do: buy something from the back of the store. So I got some equipment, most of which were one time items. The only items I would have needed if I had the gear would have been the 7805 voltage regulator and the 9 volt battery cap. Total cost would have been about 7 bucks but with the rest of the equipment it brought it closer to $50.

UPDATE: Because of a question asked here is a diagram of the solder
job:
                     _____
                    |  o  |
                    |_____|
                    |\_____\  
                    ||     | :F_P:
                    ||7805 |
        (A)         \|_____|     (B)
                    U  U  U
        Red wire    U  U  U     Red wire
        from        U  U  U     from USB
        battery     U  U  U     cable
        cap         |  |  |         |
          \      _.-'  ^  `-._     /
           `----'     / \     `---'
                     |   |   
                 ___/     \
      (C) Black wire       Black wire (D)
          from             from USB
          battery          cable
          cap as           as ground
          ground     

The green and white wires in the USB cable mean nothing in this
project.  You can snip them.  They are for data and this is not 
a data project.

And here we have a proto type of the finished job which is my first solder job ever and makes me a hardware geek now.

UPDATE: Testing
Once you have built it plug in the battery, take a meter and touch the
red rod to the (A) pin and the black rod to the (C)/(D) pin.
You should get something close to 5.2 volts.  The closer the better
but .2 in eithe direction shouldn't harm anything.

Now I just need to make a smaller more polished version. And then start on the solar powered one! It takes about 4 hours to charge it completely but I can now do it away from the house.

UPDATE:
After using it here is my experiances:
1) it takes 4 hours to fully charge if not using the palm.
2) charging while using will prolong palm battery life but it won't 
charge very well so you can't run off just the 9 volt battery.
3) wi-fi will still make the palm last just 2 hours.
4) it doesn't have a regulator that says "all done charging the plam,
going to shut off now".  So you will need to be there to unplug it so
over night charging.  
5) this is a must have accesry.

Overall skill needed to make one: 0
All you need is a steady hand.  If you shake then I would recomend
having a beer to slow the shakes. :)

UPDATE:
I made one with a DC power cord I got from a thrift store instea of
the USB cord much faster.  You can get spare plugs at a thrift store for
a buck.

:F_P:##################################################
USB Battery Charger