> I'm going to Nepal in October. I'd like to take my GPS but it eats
> batteries. I usually use rechargeables but I'll be away from a source
> of electricity for a long period.
>
> I've seen a number of portable solar-powered chargers for AA
> batteries, in particular travelwithcare.com is selling one for £12.99
> which will charge up to 4 batteries in a small box weighing 90g
>
> Has anyone on the ng any experience with solar chargers? Are they
> effective? Any recommendations?
No experience yet, but got one for a little trip I'm planning next month
- will be able to tell you more at the end of September
The charger you mentioned takes three hours to charge each battery *in
ideal conditions* so that's 12 hours of perfect sunlight to do all four.
Not sure how fast your gps eats batteries tho.
My charger has a much larger solar panel which charges 10 batteries.
These can then be taken out and used individually, or with the supplied
adpator the whole lot can be used like a car cigarette thingy - 10 x 1.2v
= 12v. Maplins were selling them off a while ago. This hints that
either no one bought them. Whether this is because there's not much sun
in Britain or that they're pants I'm not sure yet.
There're a few things I'm not too sure about with these things:
1. The batteries look like they're made of cheese.
- Ni-cads are pants. Go for NiMH (you have the choice of both)
- The batteries are likely to have a low thingy rating (amps? Hours?
something like that - how long they keep going anyway). Consider buying
rechargables with a longer life - you can get the up to 2400 wossnames
AFAIK. This will be expensive tho.
2. There is no way of making sure you don't overcharge the batteries.
Overcharging makes the batteries more likely to leak, and makes 'em run
out sooner. Expensive higher capacity batteries will be less likely to
be overcharged ('cos they take longer to charge) but will be expensive to
replacr if you do end up overcharging the life out of them.
3. Charging a mixture of dead and half charged batteries might not be a
good idea. Make sure you can charge batteries singly rather than having
to do the whole lot (you can with the one you mentioned).
4. My solar panel thing can only power things if I have a cigarette power
adapater dooberry or if it take AA batteries.
5. Buying a cigarette power adapter thingy that has various voltage and
thingy settings would solve that problem, but I'm guessing that these
would be fairly inefficient.
6. I live in Britain. Do I really expect to get much use out of this
thing??!?!
Mark.
