carless

How to Charge your Phone, PDA, etc w/ Solar
On my last tour I found myself waiting around restrooms- charging my cell phone, creepy!

Get these things, put them together, open to sun. You buy a different tip for each item.
*********Don't laugh at the tackiest place on Vashon Island (WA)**************

Coleman Exponent Flex 5
https://21st-century-goods.com/page/2.../PREP/COLFLEX5

iGo™ autopower15 Adapter
https://www.radioshack.com/product.as...Fid=273%2D1301

itips™ Smart Connector A00—Kyocera®, Motorola®, Nextel®, Samsung®, Sanyo® & PalmOne™ Tungsten™ E
https://www.radioshack.com/product.as...0&printer=true

Magictofu

I always wondered how safe these systems were for electronics (e.g. gps unit, cell phone, camera...). I have seen some solar powered charger for AA batteries and I'm sure they work fine but don't you need special adapters/transformers for everything else? How heavy is it? How bulky is it?

toThinkistoBe

"Shipping Weight: 2.10 pounds"

from https://21st-century-goods.com/page/2.../PREP/COLFLEX5

carless

https://www.backpackgeartest.org/revi...tial%20Report/
This has a review and some weight breakdowns, mine feels light. You can charge most small appliances by buying another tip.

coconut in IA

There is one for sale on www.bikeiowa.com I have one... The damn thing is near indistructible. Also you can roll it up or lay it over top of your bags to charge while riding. I would recomend them to anyone.

Cheers,

Coco

carless

I love mine, you can even charge a laptop. I thought this would be a great thread, are most people doing credit card tours/ supported? I bought a new cell phone, went to Radio Shak and bought the charging tip. You could put this in an emergency kit w/ optional battery pack and run appliances/lights/radio.

derrickito

that little solar panel will get the job done, but slowly

i tour with 20 watt flexible solar panels. they are 1.9 pounds, and put out 4 times the juice as the coleman one linked above. when not being used i roll it up and store it away. works awesome for draping over the back of a gear bag or a bob trailer while out all day on the bike. i sometimes pull along a 5 AH battery and use the panel to charge that all day, then use my electronics off of that battery. other times i ditch the battery and just charge straight to the devices using a 12v female plug

i have 6 of these 20 watts right now:


im selling 5 of them (they can be daisy chained together for more wattage). if anyone wants one, im selling them for 200 each, and im including the dongle that ends in a 12v female plug adapter (just like a car charger)

im in seattle. can pick up locally (hi vashon!)
derrick@clarknewmedia.com

Slartybartfast

the 20 watt looks like it's pretty long and would hang almost two-thirds of it's length off the end of a standard rack if attached lengthwise. the only practical way to attach would be widthwise over both panniers, but the panel only has grommets at the corners a secure clip would have to be improvised to hold it on the rack.

and what's the best battery charger to go with this?

roadfix

Problem: There's only one Sun.

derrickito

it works awesome over a trailer for touring. the length is great there. ive draped it over panniers before, just tied it off at the ends, and loosely through the middle

as for battery charger, it depends on what type of battery you are running. this is just the power source.

i typically carry a small 100 watt inverter that plugs into the female adapter, that way i have a house plug at 110 that i can use to run just about anything. some other items that i have i carry a direct 12w connector for and charge their batteries directly off of the panel

if you dont ride with it opened on your bags, it lays over the top of a tent really good too. it rolls up into a small area, then you just roll it out when you need it.

i just sold one last night.

Slartybartfast

i'm going to go with the 10 watt panel since i can manage that size better with my setup. (btw, i noticed icp solar is discontinuing the powerflex line).

i found a great page comparing the various battery chargers here, but i'm still confused as to which would be better. i'm planning on standardizing on 2500 mAh NiMH AAs to minimize the frequency of battery rotation. the brunton battpack looks great since i wouldn't have to constantly rotate batteries as in a 4 cell model; and it can itself be used to power other devices at night. (it's also recently discontinued). but it appears (i could be wrong since i'm not electronically inclined) that you have to shuffle the batteries in it to balance the charge from the number of batteries to the device being charged. also, would the charger be charging at the maximum power the solar panel is outputing, or just some low constant trickle?
ideally, i'd like to use one of the {30,60} minute fast chargers if possible.

Mr_Super_Socks

Thought I would share this gadget, too. If you have or are willing to buy a front dynamo hub, the 2006 Dahon catalog is advertising a 12v charger that connects to it to power small electronic devices. so you could do this job without the sun and even in the pouring rain.
check out the last page of the catalog

The 2006 Dahon catalogue in English is available from the Swiss distributor
https://www.dahon.ch/galery/pdf/2006_dahon_2.pdf
Other Accessories

Electronic Device Charger:
BioLogic™ ReCharge
Ever drain the batteries of your iPod on a cycling trip? Or
wish you could recharge your dead mobile phone during your
cross town commute? If the answer is yes, then you need the
BioLogic™ Recharge. The ingenious Recharge connects to the
Joule hub dynamo found on many of our bikes and serves as
a universal charger for almost any electronic device, including
iPod, mobile phone, GPS, walkie-talkie, etc. All you need is a
recharger cable for your device that fits a car cigarette lighter.

Slartybartfast

i decided against a dynamo hub.

here's the link to the powerflex specs.

carless

You guys are like trekkies, with the numbers and stuff. I like this because it's like charging your phone in the car, except you plug in to the panel and point toward sun.

Slartybartfast

do you use a charge controller/ regulator? icp's site claims that it's needed in most systems over 15 watts, but they responded to my email with: "If your battery is like or larger than a regular car battery you do not need a charge controller." which implies that i would need the controller for my 10W panel. but googling produced no definitive results, as some sites say i'll damage my devices/batteries without a regulator, and others claim it's not needed for this size.

anybody know for sure?

and i found a different regulator which claims to be better than icp's.

taylor8

It depends on the type of battery and what the built in charging circuit is. Most NiMH batteries and NiCads require a specfic charge current for a certain amount of time for longest battery life. Gel Cells (Lead Acid) require corrrect voltage and correct current. There are what is called smart chargers out there that stop charging when the battery is charged: https://www.batteryspace.com/ has some. I think If I were to want to chage a battery while I was riding I would get a 12v charger and run the output from the solar cell into it. The main question I see is how much weight to you want to carry? You can figure out how many watts your charging system uses plus some extra wast for not being 100% efficent and get the solar array that you need. A 20w 12V cell will give you something like 1.5 amps of useable power in bright sun light. That is enough to charge a 12V 4500mah battery pack in several hours. the foumula works like this. The amp hour rating of the battery pack devided by the amps the charger puts out times 1.3 The 1.3 is an industry standard used to figure loss example:

(4500mah/1500ma)*1.3 = 3.9 hours of charge time, this is for NiMH battery chargers.

The charge control units are voltage regulators for small applications where you are not going to leave the battery charging for an extended time I don't think you would need one for charging small systems.

You can look for 12v chargers made for the R/C modeling community and use them charge your battery packs. you can just plug you cell phone 12v charger adapeter in the solar cell 12 output to charge the cell phone. The adapter will take care of voltage regulation. After all a car 12 v system can put out 100's of amps at 12 v so if you just use the car adapter for what every you are charging you can't go wrong.
Joe

taylor8

One more thing the charge voltage has to be greater that what's bing charged, i.e. you can't charge an 18v system off a 12v charger/Solar cell.
Joe

Slartybartfast

thanks joe, great explanation. i was hoping to use a battpak since it could be used as a power source, but it appears to be a quick charger instead of smart charger. so i'll probably just go with one of the nicer 4-cell smart chargers. too bad there's no commercial equivalent of mark's multi-charger.

taylor8

Yes there are prowl around this url https://www.batteryspace.com/
Just because it is a fast charger does not mean it is not a smart charger. And, sometimes the smarts are built into the battery pack.

The more things you want to charge at one time the larger solar array you are going to need. One good thing is you don't have to charge your phone every day, and unless you are a real PDA junkie it should last a day or two between charges. I think lights wold be the biggest power sucker that I would be hauling along. I go on trips to get away from cell phones, pagers, computers, and such when I am on vacation I am not connected. Only reason I carry a cell phone is for emergencies and I don't trun the phone on unless I need it. I might carry a small short wave receiver to listen to the BBC at night.

Joe

Joe

sircycler

I'm considering getting a solar panel and it includes several power connectors. The most useful is the female cigarette lighter connector. My question relates to using main power when more convenient, without having to cary both DC (car) and AC adaptors. Should I bring only the AC adaptors and a DC-AC inverter that plugs into the DC port, or a AC-DC converter through which the car adaptors would plug into the wall?

I'd think the latter method is preferred since car adaptors are smaller and lighter and because there is no wasted energy when used with the solar panel. The problem is that I can't find a travel-sized AC-DC converter which handles current above 300mAh and handles international voltages.

Any suggestions?