Quote:
Originally Posted by terencek
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Buy or salvage an old car battery. Hook up a cheap solar panel to it. Get yourself a 12v car USB-charger, connect it to the battery, charge the Kindle.
In essence this is what I do all the time (with all my equipment in fact) though of course with a somewhat more sophisticated set-up!
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Although I'm not in the African bush, I can confirm all that, as I've been doing similar for the last few weeks, charging my iPhone, & K3. However, I don't like batteries very much, so just use a 20 watts monocrystalline panel directly to feed a 12/24 volts car charger (mine has a USB output so I use K3's supplied micro USB lead.) Even that's not sufficient on overcast days so I bought a second panel & just parallel connect that to the first one.
For a month or so now I haven't used either iPhone or K3's charger
I actually bought the initial panel for cycle touring camping where carting heavy batteries isn't feasible, so it's essential for me to use panels directly. Charging batteries involves considerable losses, so charging one to in turn charge another (ie the battery inside the device itself) isn't too efficient, but of course if the user is static & there's a car battery available, then fine.
I do of course, have a dynamo on my bicycle, which is fine as long as I'm moving, but if there's a "scenic" long term stop, dynamo's no good, so solar panel comes in handy then
I wouldn't contemplate any of the small "portable" solar chargers sold now I've experimented with this setup, as my panels charge iPhone & K3 in same time as the supplied mains chargers, whereas it'd take days to charge with the tiny panels.