Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Solar Charger Update

I went to Best Buy last night and bought this:



It's a power adapter that takes either 12-24VDC or 120VAC and outputs 5VDC via an USB port. I got it to play with the Brunton solar charger Leon gave me. It puts out 12VDC whereas almost everything I have with a battery charges using USB (iPod, BlackBerry, GPS). Since the solar charger only outputs 800mA at 15VDC, I was worried if there was enough power to charge USB devices after going through the adapter I bought.

During lunch, I unfolded the solar array on my dashboard, attached all the wiring plus adapters, and plugged in my iPod nano. The display on the iPod showed that it was charging. The battery was about 3/4 full anyway; after an hour, I checked back and it was fully charged. Pretty cool! The solar array did get hot sitting in the car and left a plasticky smell... no harm done.

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