Solar power for your Ipod / Iphone / Ereader

[judicatr]

Greetings all – I’ve been browsing through some older posts and came across one by Piekta regarding charging 6v batteries from solar arrays to recharge the Ipod or similar devices during power failures, etc. Pietka was right a little music is a good morale boost during difficult times. Here’s how I solved that problem…

I have an older model Brunton foldable 6 watt solar array similar to this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Brunton-Watt-Fold ... d_sim_sg_5

If you read some of the reviews about this device people complain that the panel doesn’t have plugs for USB ports that commonly used; especially with products like the Ipod, Iphone, etc. That’s true enough, but I managed to solve that problem in about 10 minutes when I found Apple’s USB Travel Kit with Car Charger, Travel Adapter & Cable. With this package I can…
1) plug the array’s female power point adapter into the array
2) plug the male Apple car charger adapter into the female array adapter
3) plug the Apple adapter into the Ipod.
The array will charge my Ipod directly in about 3 hours at midday. Remember I live at 6000' in the American Southwest. So I get about 330 days of cloudless sunshine per year.

Here’s the problem… When I upgraded to my Iphone the array doesn’t produce enough power to charge the device (you get an error message). Sooooo, here’s what I did. I did a little research and discovered that the Brunton Inspire Rechargeable Battery can be fully charged directly from the array in about 6 hours. The Inspire can be seen here…

http://www.amazon.com/Brunton-Inspire-3 ... sbs_auto_4

So here’s what I do… When I go up into the mountains around my home I charge the inspire directly from the array all day at my base camp while I’m out hiking, fishing, etc. When I’m gone I can enjoy my music while I a bag a 14,000’ Colorado Mountain Peak or explore a Utah slip rock canyon. When I return in the late afternoon I unplug the array from the battery and, when I crawl into my sleeping bag, I plug the Iphone / Ipod into the battery and charge the device overnight from the battery. When I get up the next morning I repeat the process.

With the right cable I can also use this set up to solar charge my Kindle Fire.

It works great! My array and battery are older so other manufactures may have similar, better products now that are probably even lighter if you have to walk in to a site like I do.

Also I’ve also used my array to trickle charge my R-Pod travel trailer battery when I'm dry camping in luxury. I’m not the brightest bulb in the box so there may be better ideas out there but this works well for me. Cheers.

[Bladerunner]

Hi Judicatr, you are right, music can be quite a good marale booster but I have all my survival vids on my ipod, Ron Hoods Woodsmaster series, Survivorman, all of Ray Mears stuff, etc.

The Woodsmaster series is very educational unlike Bear Grylls who will just get you killed in the first 24 hours after an emergency.

I have a wind up system to recharge my ipod as well as a Freeloader and a Freeloader Pro Portable Lithium Ion Solar Charger.

An ipod can be a lifesaver as well as a huge morale boost in a bad situation but without the ability to recharge it, it is a useless bit of plastic.

Be lucky (and fully charged)

[pietka]

The one I tried to make worked but it was over taken by a bigger solar project that solved that problem in itself! But I use a Trent battery pack charged from solar to take in the car/van this is 5000Mah with 1 USB port! There is also a newer model for larger USB devises like iPads with 2 USB port one is 500Ma Thor other charges at 1A but isn't as goo in my eyes!

[TomW]

On topic bit:
That's a pretty smart way to work it out judicatrr. Just what you would have to do to cobble something together in a prolonged shtf should you not have prepared it in advance I.e me! I currently prep to do without leccy but I'm sure it wouldn't be long till I wanted it for something so ill be storing this away ( in my head) for that day, cheers

Off topic bit:
Bear grylls still demonstrates good survival skills and in a way that makes it interesting. I wouldn't follow his routes out though lol Survivorman is my current favourite but I haven't come across woodsmaster before so ill be checking him out. You can beat a bit of les higgins though ( bush tucker man from donkeys ago) I don't think that man would ever go hungry for long
Still, bear is definitely the most hardcore He makes action filled tv programmes now but has definitely displayed the true survivor mentality through his life.