So are portable solar panels a meme or what? Are the panels that

>>949874
You are doing something wrong, if you are carrying solar panels around.

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>>949876
>4U

Judgemental asshole speaks for all.

No meme. I use to store in my main battery and charge from that after dark.

I have panels the size in OPs image.

I use it with an ankor battery.

Its pretty good

>>949876
>t. car camper

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>>949929
>subtle

I like subtle.

>>949887
How long does it take to charge a phone and under what sun conditions?

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>>949874
I have a friend who has these on his ice shack and they work well even in the winter.
He just charges a car battery with them and uses the battery to power a string of lights and a ceiling fan in the shack

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i have a powermonkey extreme

the things rugged as a mule. the power banks fantastic, many great errr "end bits?" for mini usb, car charger all sort of stuff,

the solar panels works reasonably well sprapped to a backpack to have charge all day.

have one particularly fond memory from when i was hiking in norway and was wayting at out camp for some other hikers to get back, just chilling on a rock day-sleeping with the solar panel plugged to the phone, if i closed my eyes i could hear when there was a cloud going over the panel couse it would make a slightly different noice

then i woke up and some sheep had eaten our raisins and shat all over the rock we put our trangia on the day before

im not sure this picture is the exact model i have the cord looks kinda different but i cant be assed to take a picture of all the parts

>>950006

Those panels look pretty small, how fast does it actually charge?

>>950011
ive used it like twice, that one time in norway where i fell asleep and one time were i forgot it in my window, so i guess i dont really know? but somewhere between and hour and maybe like 2 hours?

mind you this is Scandinavia so pretty cloudy, not muich sun normally, so i mostly use the power bank

>>950014
>>950011
and when im /out/ i dont really use electronics at all, so the time it takes to charge is not really a top priority for me, if i leave with the powerbank charged il have plenty for emergencies and then the panel as backup

>>950014
>>950016
well no i take taht back, would probably take fairly long time ti charge a phone from dead, but as i said earlier i use it mostly to AVOID my phone ever dying in the first place, always have phone on power saver and never use it

>>949954
See, this is the proper usage of solar power. So many people have misunderstood me when I've talked about it and thought I meant a direct transfer of power from solar panels to machine. That's not the right way at all, solar panels are an electric generator which should be used to charge batteries for use in electrical powered devices. So, of course it's practically impossible to use solar if you don't do this, but if you do it the right way solar saves a shit ton of time and energy.

I have a Goal Zero Nomad 7. Out in the California desert it's as good as usb charging from a wall socket. I have brought it up to Alaska and it was mostly useless there. Always cloudy.

>>949874
Starting seeing this cancer carried by through hiking tools on the JMT sometime in the early 00s
We had a few good laughs at their expense since it was always out of shape greenhorns who had them
Not sure what they were doing since there is probably no service there

>>949874
Someone should make these into a hat. Your back isint always facing the sun when youre out hiking.

>>950053
neither is your head but it had smaller surface area

>>949949
I live in Scotland.

We dont really get sun and it charges a normal samsung phone in about 3 hours of bright weather. I assume it would be quicker with proper sunshine

>>950046
I don't know anon, I'm considering buying one. People use phones for picture but more importantly you keep a small solar panel in your bag and if you get into an emergency or lost you at least have a way to charge your phone and dial an emergency number.

>>950247
>if you get into an emergency and it's day and it's sunny you at least have a way to charge your phone very slowly :^)
1) a portable charger is a fraction of the weight and cost, and charges faster AND isn't contingent on the weather
2) ur a fagat
3) kill yourself

>>949880
>>949929
Wait what? Why the hell go outdoors, if you are worried about your phone running out of battery. I can see use for solar panel, if you are doing really long hike, but then again you don't have to keep phone on and on the same weight you could carry a way more reliable power bank instead of fucking around with solar panels.

Tell me in what situation you have gone "gee, i wish I had solar panel" while outdooring instead of it being you techno hipstering.

But having said all that, use and do whatever makes you happy, that's what's important, right? It's just my personal aspect, that there is something fundamentally wrong if you need to carry a fucking solar panel with you while outdoors.

>>950269
Muh feelings. Seriously though also it wouldn't help in no signals areas, I may as well save for a PLB as I already have a shitty portable charger.

>>950026
Wtf am I, chopped liver?
>>949880

>>950272
>tell me what

I lived without electricity (except for the power of my wind turbine and panel stored in my deep cycle golfcart batteries), no indoor (or outoor) "plumbing", no phone (wireless or landline), no natural gas, curb service or "modern convienence" of anykind for over three years solid.

Just what I could do for myself.

A propane tank, a drum of kerosene, muh turbine n panel n batts, muh fire box n chainsaw n maul.

Try carrying two five gallon drums of kerosene on a handmade yoke made from a 2" wooden closet rod for 15 miles? You will find deep gratitude for the kindness of strangers. I found people more likely to stop if I was doing for myself, than siitting on barrels of kero.

>living by the very grit of my soul

I have tried to express this too /out/before, to little avail or concern.

USUALLY, sc/out/s just want to ignore and bitch about "their preconceptions of what "/out/" TRUELY IS.

Fucking self-involved bitches... Doing for youself, when you truely have MODERN MAGIC at your fingertips for virtually nothing, you are not thinking forward.

I love my portable solar power.

>>949880

>think twice, car charger peeps

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I've been looking into these portable Biolite Campstoves that harvest energy from a small campfire. These seem better than a solar panel setup, and fuel is everywhere outdoors. Anybody heard of these? If so, any experiences? I kind of want one for myself but they seem too good to be true.

>>951113
That's cool! It's a thermopile/thermocouple?

>>951113
Don't those things basically just spin a little fan? I mean I'm a big fan of lighting stuff on fire, but I wonder how much power they generate. Some of the ones I have seen pics of just spin some shitty little turbine and it seems like converting one of those hand-crank radios to charge a cellphone and cranking it for 5min would give you more of a charge than burning a giant pile of sticks.

tl;dr:
Anybody ever use one of these?

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>>951164
>Anybody ever use one of these?

(I haven’t used one but) The fan causes the fire to burn hot and efficiently, which generates more electricity via the thermocouple (the little penis-like thingy sticking out into the fire).

And unlike a solar panel (not that I’m knocking them) you can use it at night or when cloudy,

>>951142

Yeah, that's why it's shit. TEGs have like 5% efficiency

>>951164

I have. The main problem is that it burns twigs, which are reduced to ash in like 5 minutes at which point you have to dump the ashes, load new twigs and start again.

The next problem is that to charge a phone you need at least an hour because the battery won't accept a charge much faster, and the TEG outputs like .05 amps so more like 2 hours. How long do you plan to boil water for? How long do you want to sit there reloading twigs?

The "power pot" is also TEG based but can be left over a camp fire, which you'll likely want to keep burning for hours anyway.

>>949874

Solar panels are a dream come true IF you buy really large ones to account for varying sunlight. There's all these gimmick panels the size of an index card, often built into a battery bank that take multiple days to fill up under real world conditions.

The panels that actually deliver on the promise are ones like in your picture. Big ass panels, and several of them. Like 20 to 30 watts worth. If it's somewhere very sunny like Arizona you could do fine with 5-10 watts, otherwise go for overkill.

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>>951179
>the thermocouple (the little penis-like thingy sticking out into the fire).

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>>951183

>>949874
I have a 7W, barely charges a cheap $20 prepay phone in full sun, kills battery in less than full sun. That said, it charges a backup battery pretty well (until the backup battery broke for unrelated reasons), and the battery was charging my phone well.

>>951183
That's not a thermocouple, that's a heatsink. It is connected to seebeck device, which is kind of like a thermocouple though, except on a larger scale.

>>950269
>2) ur a fagat
>3) kill yourself

Why do you write like this?

I get that you have a personal opinion on the matter, but writing things like this makes you appear autistic.

>>951382
Lack of English comprehension, presumably.
Also doesn't seem to realize that people go /out/ for longer than a rechargeable battery will last, so he's probably also a huge pussy.

>>951384

You can get portable chargers that fit up to 8 cells. If you put the best 18650s in there, that's a little over 100 watt hours.

You don't need more than 100 watt hours if all you have is a smartphone unless civilization has collapsed.

>>951382

It's 4chan. 90% chance he is autistic.

>>951386
Last summer I hitch-hiked down the coast, then spend three months alone in the woods near Yosemite. Not everyone is a weekender.

>>951390

100 watt hours will charge a Samsung Galaxy S6 10 times. A weekend is 2 days. If you need to charge 10 times in 2 days you are probably getting your phone out too much

>>951391
Reading comprehension, learn it.

10 charges wouldn't last 3 months.

>>951393

Don't go out that long.

>>951394
Are you saying that you don't go out that long, or that I shouldn't? Because I'm not going to stop spending my summers /out/, just because you don't like the idea of my using a solar charger.

>>951399

Eh. If you have good sized solar then I guess it's fine. What I am against is people going out with underpowered chinese gimmick panels. A big fat power bank is almost always the best, simplest option.

>>951401
I have a 7W folding panel and a cheap chinese bank. Trust me, this works... at least from WA to CA during the summer.

Why not get a very large batter bank? Like a 20,000 or 10,000 mAh.

>>950026
the battery is necessary anyway because you cannot control when and how much electricity it will produce, but it would make more sense to draw directly from it and then supplement with the battery.
always going over the battery would just be an unnecessary loss in efficiency

>>951580
That weighs a lot and isn't helpful if you're gone more than a few days.

>>953263
How is it not helpful? You can charge your phone so many times. I have a 10,000mAh battery bank and it's not that heavy at all.

>>949876
I used one to charge my phone when I lived in the woods for four months. I was doing nothing wrong, kiddo

>>951113
I still remember joking with guides about how they'd eventually have to burn the whole island down just to charge their iphone

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I love my Guide 10 Plus Adventure Kit,
Not the best on the market but it's rugged as fuck and the power pack is awesome.
Shame it's not 5V2A (it's only 1A) so it can't power me RasPi in the field.