Thread: Solar charges for devices

Hey folks,

Has anyone got recommendations for chinese solar charges? I'm predominantly using my phone as a gps and for ballastic apps when away from civilaisation. be good to put some juice back into the battery when having a lunch time kip.

Cheers!

Airplane mode

specifically chinese options - no idea sorry

i've got 3x solar monkey solar chargers that i got cheaply in the UK a couple of years ago. generally used for charging phone and portable speakers and light for camp (+ rechargeable head torch/gps/kindle etc). two of the panels have a moderate capacity inbuilt battery. they are ok, but not great. they need bright conditions to do any charging and 'sort of' keep up with the moderate power requirements. i would not buy another solarmonkey if i bought again

doing a bit more research and thinking about it recently i've come to the conclusion that taking a pre-charged high capacity battery is the best way to go and then a solar panel or two to add a small amount of top up when the sun is out - or just take the battery. i found a light(ish) option for a large capacity battery and got a Promate Storm 15 15600mAh ($90ish) - this is marginally ok for lightweight trips, it must be about 400g-500g but i haven't weighed it. apparently you get 10x iPhone 5 charges but yet to test it. battery geeks will know more about batteries, i probably should have asked the forum first.

for the solar panel itself, this link is interesting and quite thorough in its assessments. goal zero looks good gear (i have a camp light Lighthouse 250 that is very good), but panels are very expensive and surprisingly it doesn't provide a high power charge vs some others - Rating Scores - The Best Solar Chargers - OutdoorGearLab

the ravpower 15W seems pretty grunty and is available in NZ (search tardme) - but it isn't small and it is expensive. weatherproof-ness seems questionable too. which takes you in full circle back to whether you should just take a decent capacity battery rather than a solar panel? depends on trip length of course

the best option by a long shot is to use a solar panel to charge a battery, store the charge there and then use the battery to charge the device - at a time that is convenient to do so. rather than leaving the solar panel hooked up to a device all day when you may want to have the device in your pack for instance. but if you do this then you are carrying a solar panel + battery. again looping back to the idea that a high capacity battery is perhaps a better idea?

would be interested to hear what else others use/recommend

Originally Posted by deepsouthaussie

Hey folks,

be good to put some juice back into the battery when having a lunch time kip.

Cheers!

specifically to this comment to put some charge in while your are having a lunchtime kip - not realistic with a plain solar panel. you would get very little charge over a lunch kip. maybe a few %. a portable battery charges fast and would do the trick over a lunch kip. solar needs to be set up in the sun all day to give you some charge

sorry deep south - just realised you are in Aus. you will have a better range of options available to you over there. ignore the available in NZ comments

+1 for Airplane mode on weekend trips

For longer trips I have a Momax iPower TOUGH 2 External Battery Pack 9000mAh.
Plenty enough charge for a couple of camera and phone charges. Its also shock/water resistant and has a wee LED torch on it which is handy.

In NZ mate down southland... The battery packs i like the idea of. thanks for your reply

Originally Posted by LOC

sorry deep south - just realised you are in Aus. you will have a better range of options available to you over there. ignore the available in NZ comments

Nah man he's in NZ but hasn't been at work for coming on 3 weeks!!

I looked at solar chargers and power packs a while back.

Someone on the forum came up with the very simple idea of flagging the charging idea and just get a spare battery for the phone. Charge at home and take with you.

So I carry a spare battery for the phone and another for the camera.

It's the lightest, cheapest and simplest solution.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

I have one of these. Coghlan's Portable Solar and Hand Crank Emergency Power Pack USB Charger | eBay
It is only 6000mAh versus chris-b's 9000 unit. Has hand crank as well and solar panel which is pretty undernourished and I don't think could ne relied upon unless you have blazingly clear days. Have yet to test its mettle in the sticks though.

Another vote for a battery pack. Solar chargers that I have owned and used have been pretty anaemic.
I use a Ravpower 8,400mAh that get good reviews and it works well.

Another vote for battery pack and airplane mode, I have bought two solar panels over the years and not been impressed-maybe if you were going bush for months on end but for up to a week a good battery pack or two is much more reliable in my experience

Originally Posted by Matt2308

Another vote for a battery pack. Solar chargers that I have owned and used have been pretty anaemic.
I use a Ravpower 8,400mAh that get good reviews and it works well.

+1 I use the battery pack off the headlight.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I got my missus a battery pack thing from Repco. She has an iPad, a Kindle touch, and her i5 and is hopeless at keeping them charged so I got her this to juice up on the run.

It was the middle option of the 3 avail and works really well. It has 2 usb ports, one at 1.2amp and one at 3.1, so as to charge a phone on the baby one and her ipad on the grunty one. The lesser battery pack option only had the one port, and the big daddy pack had three. The one I ended up getting her does 3-4 full charges depending on how dead flat the phone was to begin with, the lesser one was rated at roughly 2/3rd of this, and the big one was double.

It dumps charge into the phone just as fast as a wall socket does, so a 45 minute nap would take my i5 from 25% battery to 80% at least I'd say. If you have your phone on airplane mode and take that off a couple times a day, turn it off at night - it'd last a day and a half -ish, times three charges, so you could probably eke out close to a week with this particular model.

It's about 3 inches square and half an inch thick. Weighs a tad more than a pack of cigarettes. Will get some proper details tonight.

If you went back to the same area often enough I wonder if you could possibly take a mid-sized deep cycle battery in with you (on a heli trip so you don't have to carry the bastard) with a length of cable and a solar panel.. Position the panel somewhere on a big rock, epoxy it in place so it doesn't blow off, stash the battery in a plastic box next to it to keep it dry etc. Connect it up and it can be fully charged, waiting for you to pop past and top up portable battery pack and torch batteries or whatever.

im a big fan of my battery pack too

i even use it when i dont want my ipad tied to the wall when im using it and it needs charge
does my phone at least 3 times from 0% and my ipad twice