There are a ton of solar-charging power packs around but I find the Solartab an interesting and stylish one that might work well for camping trips and motorhomes. It’s not light (2.6 pounds / 1.2 KG) but that’s because it’s got a nice 48 Wh lithium polymer battery inside (13000 mAh and I assume the […]
It’s the 23rd of March. We’re into Spring in Europe and the sun has just moved above my neighbor’s house. According to the local weatherstation there’s 365 W/m2 hitting ground level. I’m getting 1 Watt out of my 4W Changers Maroshi panel.
The consumer-focused solar charging sector has been damaged in recent years by the influx of cheap China-manufacture red solar chargers that really don’t do what they say. This solution from Changers.com is in a different league. I had the pleasure of speaking to the founders today and got a bit of tech talk in. What […]
Spotted in my local hardware supermarket today was a surprisingly cheap 12v solar kit. The 15w solid panel was packaged with a regulator / converter that had various output voltages, two led lighting solutions and a 7ah 12v battery. The 220v inverter shown in the image was not included in the kit. The price? A […]
I’ve just done an interview with the HomeofSolarEnergy website which I guess will be posted soon. The best thing about it was that it got me unpacking my solar panel and thinking about a simple solar powered computing solution again. Update: The Interview on Home Of Solar Energy is available here. I mentioned the Viliv […]
Does this mean goodbye to my solar panel, my 1KG lead-acid battery and the box full of cables I have? Does these mean that you won’t have to spend over $1000 on a Solar UMPC kit now? iUnika have announced a range of very low end, low-cost netbooks which include one with a solar-panel on […]
When I did the Solar UMPC tour in 2007, it was an expensive job pulling together all the equipment. Foldable solar panels and ultra mobile computers were specialist items and difficult to find. The UMPC alone cost over 1100 Euro and had to be ordered through a specialist. Fortunately, Intel are starting to deliver on […]
It looks like this test is over now. The TabletKiosk MP3400 blew up on me. This morning, everything was going well. The MP3400 was charging well from the Sunlinq… …but later in the day, when I was charging the Q1 Ultra from the MP3400, it all went wrong. The MP3400 overheated in a big way… […]
One year ago (see this post for details of the 2007 Solar UMPC tour kit,) I was using the setup below for my mobile blogging and tracking. This year, its a lot simpler. And a lot more powerful. Notice how the phone, GPS tracker and Camera have merged into one device. Yes, the N82 is […]
You might remember that on the Solar Tour last year I used RoboGeo and a Garmin Etrex to enable an internet based track and tagged photo stream. The Etrex would do the tracking and every time I stopped I would download the track, to a UMPC, download the images I’d taken and run them through […]