Hi guys,
I am looking for a 4x or 3x 18650 battery box for an upcoming hiking trip. It will be used to charge my flashlight batteries as well as my cellphone.
Because of this I would prefer a battery box that charges each 18650 separately so that I can combine cells with different levels of charge.
It looks like this ENB might do the trick
http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10002784/1483300-enb-1a-1-2-18650-li-ion-battery-usb-emergency
Any other recommendations?
Thanks
why not one of this? https://www.fasttech.com/p/1137904
I don’t know about that box you linked, but most of them use paralleled batteries, and it is far from a good idea to mix charged and discharged cells inside.
with the miller, you can use the usb output with a single cell, and no worries
Charging the cellphone from a batterypack might be reasonable, but so is turning it off most of the of time. Just use it for a sending a text report a short moment once or twice a day. That way a normal charge can last a very long trip. But using a batterypack to charge flashlight batteries seems a little bit extreme. It would be more efficient and lightweight to carry some spare flashlight batteries. Charging a battery from another is not lossless. Having the ability to recharge the cellphone is a reasonable life insurance.
Also during a hike you often are in areas with little or no light pollution. It is a nice opportunity to experience how good the human eye can see in darkness with only starlight and moonlight, if you give it a few hours to adapt. The world becomes fuzzy and grey. You se things better by not looking straight at them, the peripheral vision is more light sensitive, but also black and white and extra sensitive to motion. So you see your surroundings best when moving and looking around. Even a very short burst from a high powered flashlight will inhibit the adaption. Can be used tactically… This is one of the reasons for a hike, for me. Experience the night. Obviously I have flashlights with me, but I try to avoid using them if I can. And if I do need them I try to use flashlights that can be used with very little output. That means that a single set of batteries may last a week or more.
If you just want to use a battery box to charge a cell phone, the one you linked to would be ok but I would suggest the 3 cell ENB-Tri18650 from FT or banggood.
Now the bit I don’t quite understand (I think I might have spent too much time in the pub 8)) you want to charge your light batteries! if you are going to place them inside the battery box and use its charge function with what are you powering it with? or are you wanting to use another battery box for those cells? In which case you could use a ML-101 but they are not quick. But using 18650s to charge 18650s does not seem to me the way to go. Or have I got totally the wrong end of the stick?
As said there are losses and frankly unless you have another power supply (say a cars) you would be far better off carrying fully charged spare batteries for your lights and just keep the battery box for the phone.
It looks like this one has all of the batteries connected in parallel, so no combining batteries of different voltages.
I will only have access to power one night a week, so I want to be able to charge all of my batteries at one time while I seep. This rules out single cell chargers.
Ah, I think I get it now, use the box to charge the phone during the day then add the flashlight batteries and charge all at night.
I don’t think I’ve seen a 4 bay box with 4 separate channels.
You may be better off taking a box for the phone and a separate charger for the light batteries, assuming you have access to two outlets at night. A little bulkier too but not much.
Not true, afaik the enb box linked uses 1 cell at a time, so, it doesn’t matter if one cell is full and the other one is empty.
I don’t know that box, as I said before, but the specs in fasttech are not helping much. If it works as you describe, I find it quite interesting
Probably not terribly space efficient but what about several ML-102s running overnight from a powered USB hub?