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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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I love the Goal Zero stuff, lots of flexibility between components. I have their small panel for charging my ipod and I also have their speaker system but I am thinking of getting the 27w panel and the large battery and inverter for car camping, cool little set up.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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The benefit of being able to continue to solar panel recharge your AA batteries while they are inside
whatever type of emergency mobile phone recharger device that is concurrently
recharging a mobile phone is obvious.
An Apple iPhone will be dead after 2 days without recharge from taking lots of pictures, GPS fixes,
and trying to make calls while searching for signal at ridge crossings.
Only the price of any light weight setup to keep you 'connected' is
the problem. Small solar is slow and cheap. Big solar is fast and expensive.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Finally that BioLite stove is going into production.
They're taking pre-orders for delivery in 2012. $0.00 down payment is nice.
Size of a water bottle, charges USB gadgets while cooking food, not just a water boiler.
Its a nighttime alternative to solar when there's not much to do but sit around and stay warm, charge batteries, send emails etc its got some possibilities.
http://www.biolitestove.com/CampStove.html
http://vimeo.com/32822376
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Thanks for the BioLite Stove link - now that is some inspirational thinking (not so much the camp , but rather the home version).
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grover
climber
Dabville. Gnarlandia
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Wonder what the unit would weigh without the ipood charger?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
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When extended climbing trips requires charging your Makita 18v lithium batteries for your cordless rotary hammer these chargers so far discussed and reviewed are under powdered and very high priced.
You can often build you own charger/controller much cheaper by shopping the site Chris mentioned(affordable-solar) , Amazon, and ebay. Batteries(gel(off-raod) or sealed (motorcycle)if you are packing these) are sometimes just as cheaper locally--maybe due to shipping. For the inverter shop ebay and search for "pure sine wave inverter".
The very cheap solar controllers ($10.00 ebay from China) are likely not to take very good care of you battery in the long run but they are adequate for a week or so. Steka ($)and Morningstar ($$$) are outstanding controllers for taking care of your batteries and have other safety features.
Sometimes you can find a way to skip the inverter/120v powered charger step and get a DC charger that overall will use about 50% of the energy you would use by going AC route. Makita makes a 12v (cigarette plug) charger for charging their 18v lithium batteries. Using this DC charger saves about 50% on the energy requirements.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Jan 25, 2012 - 07:00pm PT
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Here's a sort of competitor from Japan to the U.S. Biolite stove. Its a cooking pot with the thermoelectric generator built into it for USB charging of devices.
Video shoes it charging an iPhone from dead to working state.
Voltage/current meter shows whats going on: approx 1/2 amp at 5volts
Pretty slick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTBXydMbjc
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Update:
I have had the Goal Zero Extreme Base Camp set up for about 8 months now, it includes 2 of the large power packs, two inverters and 4 Boulder 30 solar panels and four Lite-a-Life lites. I used it for a week on Lake Powell to run laptops, charge cameras and phones etc.. One power pack fully charged will run a laptop and charge iPads and phones with ease with plenty of juice to spare. Plugged into the 4 solar panels during the day the power pack charges in 3-4 hours in full sunlight. This set up is for car/boat camping only as the power packs and solar panels are big and heavy. It's a stout set up and have no complaints so far.
My kit is this x2 with plus the lit-a-lifes
http://www.goalzero.com/shop/p/65/Extreme-350-Explorer-Kit/1:3/
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