Originally Posted by
jrickards
You don't say what it is that you want to charge so I'm going to make an assumption. Have you considered keeping your device/batteries charged using a solar charger? Although the trickle is rather small, it may be sufficient to maintain a reasonable charge.
I used a solar charger quite a bit. 6V (nominal) with USB out. It would charge a Kindle in about the same time as a wall outlet (ie pretty slowly). I could charge it wth the USB cable that came with the Kindle. Same with cell phone.
There is a great little device, Lenmar PPU as I recall, that I got from Amazon. It is superlight. You do have to take care of it in the sense of no rough handling. It allows you to charge all kinds of batteries from the solar charger's USB port, including camera batteries and 18650s (with some tweaking). I believe ultralighters call these devices 'cottonpickers,' and I believe there are some other models as well.
Long story short: it all worked for about a summer. It was okay. Slow. Rather inconvenient. Not great. It worked though, I'll definitely give it that.
Then it got fritzy and slowly futzed out.
Next time I might try the Suntactics solar panel, if I go that way again. It looks like one of the best. Don't know the expected service life, but it looks good for its type of panel.
I'm more interested in this fastcharging approach for now. I like it.
I'm looking to be able to charge a variety of things -- lithium rechargeable 14500s and 18650s, along with a Kindle and the batteries in a digital camera. Maybe a laptop at times, and maybe cell phones at times. Also NiMH AAs (which I really appreciate -- some of the Sanyos are good for many hundreds of cycles. Super reliable. Lots of power. Great, great batteries).
I do have a Duracell CEF NiMH charger that has a USB-out port (great feature of this charger -- see N Lee's review at
www.amazon.com ). Actually two, US and Australian.
The charging isn't terribly snappy but the USB port is very nice to have in such a device, as is the ability to use Sanyo NiMH AAs (which are the great batteries mentioned above that I like and trust).
Ditto for the Xtar WP2II -- same USB-out idea, but it works with lithiums rather than NiMHs. Power transfer to the USB port is not efficient, but it works. I have one and I've used it a lot.
None of this gives fastcharging capabilities, though.
That's what I'm most interested in developing at this point.