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has anyone got any real world experience of the various solar chargers that you can fettle onto a backpack/rucksack/whatever they're bloody called?
Just thinking of a phone charging option....
We bought a £12 Chinese one for C2C and strapped it to the luggage rack. It was a complete waste of money.
I looked at this, it seems you need a much larger one than you think to get any meaningful charge. To do a phone, you're looking at something the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
I'd go for (and am going to go for) a 20k mAhpowerbank instead.
I have one that I got via kickstarter a while back.
Used it a lot while camping and it will fully charge a decent sized power pack to full during a sunny day. We ran some led bulb off it during the evening and re-charged 3 phones.
Hard to fault.
Any chance of a linky, dave?
Another alternative for you, i had quite a few big batteries knocking about that I use for night riding, and used one of these with one of the batteries adaptors with the batteries which worked great. http://www.candb-seen.co.uk/product-dc-battery-adaptor.html
I managed to charge my go pro, Garmin, and about 3 phones(not all mine) from one battery and it still had charge left.
Obviously it depends if you've already got a battery or not and whether you were using it for a light already.
I've messed around a lot with portable solar chargers and found them pretty limited* - your best bet is definitely a rechargeable power pack (e.g. an Anker 20,000 mAh-ish) which will keep phones etc charged over several days, then plug the solar panel into that to top it up if possible.
* expensive failed experiment 😉
I bought an anker solar charger a few years ago, and use it to charge a portable charger, it works better than direct to the phone in my experience and the smarter devices dont like the input fluctuating. I didmhang it on my backpack for a while at a festival,and probably looked a bit of a dick, but it worked. They do need to be in direct sunlight to get a decent flow though, and unless you are travelling on an especially conveniently arced trail then its not going to perform very well, when you are stationary and it's still sunny its pretty useful though. Not tiny but it folds flat.
I cant find a link now but there are similar ones on amazon. Mines a single port and 3 panels.
Buy a pebble cache battery. 10000 mah. Will charge a phone 4 or 5 times .Try and charge it at a pub or a campsite when you stop.
Chances are it will be overcast and just dead weight in the UK