There is one other thread on this, but it's from 2008. It seems like technology changes so fast these days that fresh thread is required.

For camping this summer and shooting video, I need some juice to charge my cameras and goodies, but I have no idea what's appropriate for stuff like GoPros and iPhones. My DSLR battery charger is 110v, is there any chance for charging that with solar? Prob should get a transformed charger for that anyway.

A little research found 2 players: Goal Zero and Joos. I know nothing about them. Anyone?

Goal Zero Guide 10



Joos Orange

My awesome wife gave me a PowerMonkey Extreme for my birthday. I haven't used the solar panel yet, but have used the battery on it to charge iPhones and iPads in the wild without any issues.
Should take about a day to charge up the battery with solar, which is enough for several iPhone and iPad full charges.
It comes with adapters for pretty much any device under the sun.


http://m.rei.com/mt/www.rei.com/product/835332/powertraveller-powermonkey-extreme-solar-battery-charger
Pretty awesome!

I want to be cool like Oregon180 so I bought the same one after using his to charge my devices on our last trip Worked great and also has good reviews.

I too have the Power Monkey. It's a fine unit. I find I mostly wall-charge it at home, and it works long enough for full-day iPhone use. With solar collectors it's all about size, and the models Zane posted appear to have 3-5 times the surface area of the Power Monkey. Didn't look to see if they include battery packs or not.
If you're looking at batteries, look at some of the lithium-ion batteries sold to power CPAP breathing machines. They have greater cost and weight, but they hold a lot of juice, and they're deep-cycle which is great for electronics.

-DP

Here's a made-in-USA line of portable solar chargers in a wide range of sizes:

http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/products/ ... =6578,6579

My current solar charger is a Sunlinq Portable Solar GS25F Panel Charger 25W 12V purchased in 2007. I lent it to a friend to take to 2009 OshKosh and he said it performed great.

The Powerfilm R15 or R28 may be a newer technology but are not packaged as nice.

For more power at half the cost but less robust, only weather resistant not weather proof, and not as packable is the HQRP 30 or 45 Watt flexible panel.

My Iphone 4 runs out of juice way too soon if I am using much of Foreflight and/or GPS tracker. I bought a uNu Power DX PLUS External Protective Battery Case for iPhone 4S & 4 which keeps it alive nicely.

This year at Oshkosh, I intend to feed the solar into a plug to 4 cigarette lighter socket, one of which feeds a cigarette lighter plug to 4 USB and one of which feeds the plug of a Tripp Lite PV150 which will feed a multi outlet AC strip for whatever else is easiest to feed AC and for the charger of the LiFePO4 12 volt battery which powers the miscellaneous electronics in the plane. (I don't like wires running from the front panel lighter socket especially when there is somebody in the right seat.)

All-Battery.com is running a Tenergy 12.8V 7Ah LiFePO4 Rechargeable Battery Buy One Get One Free which I took advantage of. Coupon DAD1368 got me an additional 10% off.

I use a 50w panel that fits on the hat rack of the 182. It keeps my battery charged while Im off hiking for a few days, runs the XM weather when I'm ready to leave, or keeps my Ipad and Led's charged. Puts out 13.5 vdc when trickle charging, and stays over 13v when the sun is out while running the weather and electric gyro. It was a random buy off of the internet for under 100 bucks. It makes slightly over 60W in full sun, despite its 50 W rating.

Solar won't do it yet in any meaningful way. I ended up getting things like this: http://www.amazon.com/Anker-Thunderbolt ... d_cp_cps_2

Though I found myself *really* being away from electric power less often than I expected. So my best friends have turned out to be these: http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-6-Outlet-S ... d_sim_hi_6

and these: http://www.amazon.com/Skiva-PowerFlow-S ... w+quadfire

Note on the latter. You need 2 amp ports to charge ipads, not all multi-chargers have them. The one above has two.

Zane, also check REI, they have a lot of different solar chargers. I'm in the same boat, but haven't taken time to do all the research on the different ones. REI's website shows more than what is in the actual store.

Brent

I just went through this and found http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Portable-Solar-Reviews. I ended up purchasing the solar monkey adventurer but it's still on the way so can't review it yet. I like the fact that it's got it's own onboard battery so you can recharge stuff at night. I plan on just tying it on top of the backpack during the day (probably won't do so good if hiking through thick forest ...shouldn't be a big problem where we hike though, above treeline in the Sierra). So when I have it in my hand I'll be able to give a first impression..

Put another way, you can buy $200 worth of the battery backpacks I linked and have the equivalent of probably about 10-15 days of sunlight hitting that $200 REI rig. And that's assuming you aren't in a valley or in the woods and losing much of the sunlight.

Until recently I wouldnt have been able to answer this with any help, but for some reason I can now.

Randomly enough a week ago, I went into my co-workers office. This man, Eugene, has 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 of EVERYTHING. Literally. I go into his office and he has 2 phones, one to call with, one to call the other in case he loses it. 3 iPads, the first wouldn't get his emails, so instead of going in and changing the incoming and outgoing settings, he bought a new one. The new one only had 64GB, that wasnt enough for his Barry Manillo (sp?) collection, so instead of a bigger Micro SD Card, he bought a 128GB iPad. Same with his sony "walkman" he calls it, to small, and of course there is better out there, so now he has 2 MP3 players. Oh and a Albersons size bag with any connector know to man, long, short, small, big. But whats a man to do with only about 400GB of space on different devices combined. Of course get a External HD, but not one with plugs..too old school, one thats Bluetooth and has 2 TB of data.

Now that "Eugene" has one of every device know to man. Now that "Eugene" doesnt want anyone tracking his power usage, he went out and bought 2 solar panels to charge all of his stuff. He sets them in the window and has a 4way usb plug attached to it. He charges his iPads, Kindles, Phones, iPods, MP3 players, Hard drives, bluetooth hearing aids, etc.

I usually go in and mess around with his things ( I only have an 4 yr old, outdated android phone with 2 GB card in it.) Recently I saw a new items he bought and it was a set of solar chargers. It was the Joos x2

The Joos works ok. It took 2 hours to charge my phone up 40%. It takes about 4 hours to charge only one of his iPads 60%, hooking up multiple items obvioulsy makes it slower. If you worried about weight, specifically for carrying it on your person, backpacking per se, then it would be quite heavy. It is fairy bulky. My initial take on it was 5 out of 10. After using it for a while, id stay at 5 out of 10. It does work, albeit slowly. But since it does work, its FREE power and thats pretty bad ass. I hooked up my phone to it and ran Pandora for a while. The phone used more battery than the Joos could provide. 2 steps back, 1 forward type deal.

For more power, I use the following -

GoPros I bought 2 of these, so i have 5 batteries, they are just as good or better than original GoPro batterys I might add
- http://www.amazon.com/Wasabi-Power-Batt ... er+battery

Phone - when Im around something with cig plug - http://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-inverter-a ... er+for+car

When i dont have a cig plug but a battery - http://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-blackberry ... om+battery

When all else fails, I turn my phone on Airplane mode. No calls or data or the like but I can use the GPS, turn off Airplane mode when i need to make a call. I can get 6 days on one battery with airplane mode on.

Sorry for the long entry.

Word

Another option is to buy a boat battery.

The battery pack I linked is 13000mah, or 13ah. You can get a 100ah boat battery for $270. 100ah worth of my batteries would be $350.

The advantage of the system I linked is that it has USB ports built into it and you'd have to find a way to get USB power out of a boat battery. Wouldn't be too hard to do, but you'd have to google something up.

A single 100ah boat battery would be equivalent to something like 70-100 days of solar power from the REI setup. Or, said another way, the entire summer.

rw2 wrote:The advantage of the system I linked is that it has USB ports built into it and you'd have to find a way to get USB power out of a boat battery. Wouldn't be too hard to do, but you'd have to google something up.

When i dont have a cig plug but a battery - http://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-blackberry ... om+battery

Look around alot of these have USBs on em.

Zzz wrote:
A little research found 2 players: Goal Zero and Joos. I know nothing about them. Anyone?

I have made a couple trips north running the Nomad7 which is actually what is shown in that Goal Zero 'Guide10' Kit

The Guide10 is the battery pack that comes in the kit. You can carry just the Nomad7, and charge direct and be a whole lot lighter, or you can carry the whole shootin match and have the Nomad7 charging the battery pack all day long... then get your phone or ipad charged off that... It does usb and 12 cig... They have a trickle charge adapter for the bigger nomads which might be of interest for airplanes, but if a guy was in a pinch and couldn't prop the plane for whatever reason, I am betting even the 7 would work... It would probably take a days worth of light to get you something useable though...

It works well, and the trade off for the extra weight to carry is worth it IMHO (when airplane camping), if you are carrying multiple electro gadgets, and are in the sticks...

Week long back packing, hunting etc... I'd probably just keep an extra battery.... but then again, those scenarios wouldn't find me carrying an ipad or laptop...

If you are like most 'modernized' folks and expect instant gratification, you will be severely disappointed. On the other hand, if you want to pay once, and have juice whenever , this will keep you happy, and doesn't weigh a tenth of what a boat battery weighs

To answer Zzzz more directly, last year in Alaska I carried 2 Drifts, an Ipad and we had 2 cell phones between us. My plane has a 12v cig plug, but all i ever used was my nomad and the guide 10 for back up juice... We are leaving again in a few days, and although I've had a year to upgrade or rethink it, nothing is changing in my charging plan... YMMV

Take care, Rob

Rob wrote:If you are like most 'modernized' folks and expect instant gratification, you will be severely disappointed. On the other hand, if you want to pay once, and have juice whenever , this will keep you happy, and doesn't weigh a tenth of what a boat battery weighs

You've probably heard the phrase in backpacking that "ounces make pounds". I guess boat batteries would give you strong legs.

Looks like we have two versions of this thread: This one and http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12791.

Oregon180 wrote:Looks like we have two versions of this thread: This one and http://www.backcountrypilot.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12791.

woooops...lol

Zzz wrote:
A little research found 2 players: Goal Zero and Joos. I know nothing about them. Anyone?

I have made a couple trips north running the Nomad7 which is actually what is shown in that Goal Zero 'Guide10' Kit

The Guide10 is the battery pack that comes in the kit. You can carry just the Nomad7, and charge direct and be a whole lot lighter, or you can carry the whole shootin match and have the Nomad7 charging the battery pack all day long... then get your phone or ipad charged off that... It does usb and 12 cig... They have a trickle charge adapter for the bigger nomads which might be of interest for airplanes, but if a guy was in a pinch and couldn't prop the plane for whatever reason, I am betting even the 7 would work... It would probably take a days worth of light to get you something useable though...

It works well, and the trade off for the extra weight to carry is worth it IMHO (when airplane camping), if you are carrying multiple electro gadgets, and are in the sticks...

Week long back packing, hunting etc... I'd probably just keep an extra battery.... but then again, those scenarios wouldn't find me carrying an ipad or laptop...

If you are like most 'modernized' folks and expect instant gratification, you will be severely disappointed. On the other hand, if you want to pay once, and have juice whenever , this will keep you happy, and doesn't weigh a tenth of what a boat battery weighs

To answer Zzzz more directly, last year in Alaska I carried 2 Drifts, an Ipad and we had 2 cell phones between us. My plane has a 12v cig plug, but all i ever used was my nomad and the guide 10 for back up juice... We are leaving again in a few days, and although I've had a year to upgrade or rethink it, nothing is changing in my charging plan... YMMV

Take care, Rob

FWIW: Guide10 is 2000mah

So you will be relying on solar power much more quickly than with some of the other solutions.

Canon DSLR batteries are 2600mah. So you would get less than one charge from Guide10.

iPad is 11,000mah. So Guide10 wouldn't even make a dent in that.

Also, I wasn't able to google up what the solar panels in these solutions actually produce. But the formula is watts * volts = amps.

The panels in this thread list watts, but I haven't seen volts listed for any of them. If you can find the volts somewhere, you can determine what they will produce in an hour of full sunlight. Given that they aren't bragging about it, I suspect the voltages are pretty low.