Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 118

Visor DX off the grid: Experiment in progress

Greetings -

as a few long time member may remember, there was a thread about solar power and PDA's. At the time I had suggested that having the flip cover made up of PV panels would be the bomb.

Well, this ain't it, but its still interesting.

I bought one of the ICU power units for my VDX a long while back. For those who are not familar with them, its a pair of NiMH batteries, a custom battery cover, and a charging unit that runs on either 12 VDC or 110/120 AC depending on what end you use. This works great, except the snap on head lost a part, and I have to use a rubber band to hold in place when I charge my PDA.

I was down at Harbor Freight today, and noticed that they were selling solar powered battery chargers. One model (the BatterySaver Powerpak by ICP Tech) has the ability to plug in a 12v charger directly into the unit. It can also charge 4 AA batteries at the same time.

I bought it ($35.00) and will be testing it next week while I am camping. It claims 140 milliamp per hour charging at 6 volts, and I only have 2 AAA's in my PDA to charge at 12, so it should be the same. The AAA's are 550's, so I should be able to keep my PDA charged with just a couple of hours of sunlight a day. Since I live in the Southwest, sunlight shouldn't be a problem.

The interesting part for most folks would be the ability to trickle charge your PDA *and* a cell phone. If you really wanted to be able to go trekking with your visor and a cell phone, you shouldn't have to worry about running out of power. I'll post results when I return. I intend to use this to charge my visor, and also my batteries for a Kodak digital camera.

If you're interested check out harbor freight and ICP Tech's web pages.

www.harborfreight.com or www.icpglobal.com


Cheers!

Tucson Sailors

Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Great Barrington, MA
Posts: 20

This sounds very interesting. Keep us abreast of yr discoveries.

thanks,
bagelche