Monday, April 7, 2008

Solar charging mobile devices

I'm starting to look at power options for the various devices that I like to have with me when backpacking. The HTC P4000 uses a mini-USB jack to recharge it and both the Garmin 60CSx GPS and the Canon have this type of jack as well. Unfortunately, neither charges via it. The 60CSx can be powered by the USB jack but it won't recharge the batteries. This is better than nothing as I'm looking at a Solio Classic solar charger. This 156g (5.6oz) fold out unit has three solar cells on it that recharge a built-in but replacable 1600 mAh Lithium Ion battery. The battery can be recharged from the solar cells, from AC or from 12v DC. It comes with a number of different charging tips that allow it to charge or power lots of different devices. The idea is that you can leave it charging the built-in battery with it strapped to the backpack or while in camp and then when needed plug the device into it that needs powering up.

So, with this, the PDA/phone and the GPS would be covered but the Canon SD850IS camera would not. So far I can't see any compact camera from Canon or Sony that can recharge the battery in the camera body; they all have separate AC chargers for their custom batteries. I already have two batteries for the Canon and I get about 120+ pictures from a charge so as long as both batteries were fully charged before the trip they should last for as long as a trip like the John Muir Trail would take (15-21 days).

The Brunton ADC, I'm not sure about yet. I haven't purchased one yet as I'm not convinced of its utility. I have a home weather station already that tries to predice that weather using the barometric pressure trends but it is almost never correct so the only useful features of it I can see would be time (but I've got a TAG watch already), alarm, temperature and wind speed. I'll continue to look for some reviews before making a decision.

No comments: