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Thread: solar charger?

  1. #61
    Registered User Wise Old Owl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    You can get a small wall charger that has a usb charging port. You can get one for less than $2 shipped. I'd give you a link to where I got mine, but the website is down. These chargers can be smaller than those wooden blocks we played with as a child. Get one with at least 1A of output per port or you'll be waiting many hours for your battery to charge. More current is better, but the chargers I've found are much bigger, although some here would probably think they're more than small and light enough. You can charge while you're eating in town. I've heard of folks charging at grocery stores.
    I agree - old Blackberry chargers are 700 Mah and if you can find higher go for it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    You can get a small wall charger that has a usb charging port.
    One of those little cube-shaped, 5v, 1A Apple wall chargers with a real short USB cable weighs less than 2 ozs. This combo worked for my droid, New Trent battery, and iPod Nano. I carried 2 sets so I could simultaneously charge 2 items.
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    You can get a small wall charger that has a usb charging port. You can get one for less than $2 shipped. I'd give you a link to where I got mine, but the website is down. These chargers can be smaller than those wooden blocks we played with as a child. Get one with at least 1A of output per port or you'll be waiting many hours for your battery to charge. More current is better, but the chargers I've found are much bigger, although some here would probably think they're more than small and light enough. You can charge while you're eating in town. I've heard of folks charging at grocery stores.
    Here's the charger I have from a different vendor, although I've bought things from this place before.

    http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/1...rcharger-white

    I like that the body is barely bigger than the prongs. If it were much smaller, it might be difficult to get enough purchase to unplug it. I've only used it to charge my mp3 player, and I've noticed that it charges it much faster than when using the usb port on my computer. That makes sense since my usb port only puts out half the current of this charger.

    Take note that this ships from China, so even though this is one of the fastest Chinese vendors around, it'll still take about a week for shipping. Also, it's almost Chinese New Year's, and shipping will all but cease for a couple weeks soon. At least this vendor seems to always use Hong Kong Post which seems to be a competent courier. The other inexpensive shipper some companies there use is China Post, and they use an asinine, and predictably frustrating, last-in, first-out system.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LDog View Post
    One of those little cube-shaped, 5v, 1A Apple wall chargers with a real short USB cable weighs less than 2 ozs. This combo worked for my droid, New Trent battery, and iPod Nano. I carried 2 sets so I could simultaneously charge 2 items.
    Good suggestion for those that already have Apple products. I don't, but that was what I first looked for when I needed a usb wall charger. I had trouble finding one though, so opted for something else.

    The one I just provided a link to is a clone of the Apple wall charger. It looks almost exactly the same. I suspect most people would say it literally looks exactly the same. The only visible difference is that the first and last line of the label is different and the internal walls of the usb plug has minor inconsequential differences that I needed a flashlight to see, but the rest is the same including the line breaks. The size is the same down to tenths of a millimeter. The genuine Apple charger weighs 0.810 oz. The clone weighs 0.660 oz.

  5. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by leaftye View Post
    Here's the charger I have from a different vendor, although I've bought things from this place before.

    http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/1...rcharger-white
    That's the ticket. Just like the lil Apple wall units. Mine weighs .8 ozs each.
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    This thread had me spend some quality time with my charging system. With a droid, an ipod, and a camera, I was carrying spare batteries and a New Trent external battery for extra capacity, a pair of Apple-style chargers, and a universal charger for the camera and phone batteries. The system allowed me to charge nearly everything concurrently, saving time in town. Nearly 12 ozs in all. It kept my stuff going for a 12 day period, but I'm not likely to do that too often ... Looked for excessive capacity and redundancies, and chopped 5 ozs.

    http://www.laughingdog.com/2013/01/r...ng-system.html

    The point in all this, is that the universal charger has moveable pins that allow it to be used for a variety of batteries. It's lighter than the charger that came with my camera, plus it has a USB out that can be used to charge phones, iPods, etc. Paired with a USB cable, its a one-man-band. If yer crazy enough to carry a smart phone *and* a camera, it might worth looking at.

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    I've used a charger like that for the past year because the charging/usb port on my phone is broken. The output on mine is 600 mA, so it doesn't charge things quickly. It probably splits the current when both parts of the charger are used.

    Those exposed pins should also make it possible to use this with magnetic leads to charge lithium ion batteries like the 18650 used in a Zebralight H600.


    It should be lighter and nearly as quick to use this with the Apple-style charger and leads that have magnetic alligator clips. This would give the versatility to charge any lithium ion battery.

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    If you liked the 1A Apple charger or the <$2 clone I mentioned earlier, you might like this 1.5A (7.5 watts) version even more.
    https://www.fasttech.com/products/1235601

    It's a little more expensive at $2.65.

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    I have to revoke my previous recommendation for the Apple-clone charger. The review below tested the 240V european plug version, but the US plug version is probably just as unsafe. It doesn't put out the 1A it says it does either.

    Fortunately the review found a few good chargers.

    http://budgetlightforum.com/node/18731

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