Dummy coin cells with wires?

[e100]

Do these things exist for doing factory testing or firmware upgrades without using a real battery?

I have a bunch of battery powered wireless switches that need firmware updates and each one takes over an hour, and so it drains a lot of the energy from a CR2032 lithium coin cell. Temporarily attaching wires to the fragile contacts is not easy.

[Doctorandus_P]

Apparently they do exist:

[nali]

Oddly enough I was looking for the same a week or so ago. I decided the Aliexpress offering was a bit meh, I found a 3D print on Thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4757807

At the end of the day I just tacked power on to  the programming header which worked in my case.

[tszaboo]

You can order 3.2mm thick PCBs or stack two PCBs on top of each other to make a CR3032 replacement.

[e100]

Oddly enough I was looking for the same a week or so ago. I decided the Aliexpress offering was a bit meh

The Aliexpress ones look unusable as they have literally just soldered a wire to the bottom of a dead battery which raises the height and the wire has to somehow loop over the edge which for most battery holders is never going to work.

I found a 3D print on Thingiverse

It's seems odd that there are no ready made solutions.

[e100]

You can order 3.2mm thick PCBs or stack two PCBs on top of each other to make a CR3032 replacement.

Do you mean with edge plating for the sideways contact patch?

[tszaboo]

You can order 3.2mm thick PCBs or stack two PCBs on top of each other to make a CR3032 replacement.

Do you mean with edge plating for the sideways contact patch?

I think the cell holder that we were using had top/bottom contacts.
But yeah, edge plating would work.

[Doctorandus_P]

The Aliexpress ones look unusable as they have literally just soldered a wire to the bottom of a dead battery

That's what I thought at first too, but the edge between the battery halves does not look like a proper seal. They are probably making these from pre-production half products.

... which raises the height and the wire has to somehow loop over the edge which for most battery holders is never going to work.

Engage brain before responding. I guess you are capable of soldering yourself and drilling some holes.
There are no standard solutions for a thing like this. Battery holders are made in many different varieties and leaving room for attaching wires to the coincells themselves is no consideration.

Maybe you can hack something together from a real coin or a steel washer for one pole, and add a piece of PCB or other conductive surface and glue them together. Maybe add some layers of paper of plastic foil for insulation and to get to the right diameter.

[thm_w]

The Aliexpress ones look unusable as they have literally just soldered a wire to the bottom of a dead battery which raises the height and the wire has to somehow loop over the edge which for most battery holders is never going to work.

Looks like it would work fine for slide in style holders, you just don't slide the battery in all of the way.

Lots of results on google.
https://hackaday.io/project/26896-coin-cell-battery-emulator-cr2016cr2032
https://batteryeliminatorstore.com/products/cr2032-battery-eliminator-2-aa-powered