Let me start off by saying, I know next to nothing about these things!! In a couple of months I’ll be going out on a houseboat for a week…so I’ve been looking at options to recharge my phone when required.
Is this what they are used for? Throwing 1-4 18650’s in and the box converts it to power you can use to charge up USB devices.
Is there some kind of internal cut off so they don’t completely drain the 18650’s?
What battery boxes are recommended or are they mostly the same?
Any information would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys.
Buy you the Xtar charger with the usb charging port, also has a car cig. plug adapter to charge batteries in the car. You can easily pop in a new battery when one is depleted. All your lithium batteries are potential charge banks.
I am already using the i4 Intellicharger to charge all my batteries.
And I have a set of 4 of these I was hoping I could use with the battery bank.
If protected batteries don’t work as well, I was going to buy a set of these for the FFIV I will undoubtedly buy sometime in the future.
I have seen a few of HKJ’s reviews, but he never seems to really say things like “in my opinion this is the best currently available” and “they work like this:”
I know for someone as professional as him, he probably wants to be very neutral coming into each review.
Does anyone know where to find more info on battery boxes? Just general, not so much the technical jargon HKJ goes into.
I’ve bought a few chargers from this vendor, and the service is flawless.
An interesting thing about these chargers… they work fantastic with Eneloops, but not with Alkaline or Lithium (as far as charging my SmartPhone goes).
At first I tried Energizer Lithium; and they didn’t work at all. I wrote the vendor and he said you absolutely must use NIMH.
I tried it and he was right. I guess it’s because NIMH can support the current draw that a modern SmartPhone wants???
I would imagine that your houseboat will have an inverter of some sort, giving access to mains power. I have a narrowboat with such a thing, so charging phones, tablets etc, isn’t normally a problem (best done when the engine is running). You might even have a generator.
One thing I’ve never worked out is whether my (non-sine wave) inverter would be good for li-ion chargers. I expect it would be OK, just haven’t tried it yet.
that seems to do a pretty good job. (Mind you, I've only had it a couple of months so I haven't done extensive testing.)
It is one of the models that can input/output at the same time (not all battery boxes can). I find that useful as I can hook it up to a Solar Panel (do a search for Cottonpickers in the CPF marketplace) to charge while at the same time using it to charge my phone or tablet. This works well on days of intemittent sun.
Of course, it can also be charged from a mains PSU if you have an inverter on board.
Voltage checking on termination has never shown it to be over 4.20V.
About my only minor gripe with it is that the tiny button switch for the "built in flashlight" is easily pressed if bumped so you can open your bag and find the 5mm led glowing. Not a big deal and would probably be easy to prevent with a small rubber washer and some sticky tape.
Yup, unprotected and protected batteries seem to work fine. (At least, I think that every review I’ve seen from HKJ has said that unprotecteds are fine.)
One tiny note, many of these units have a tiny reset button that you need to press when you change the batteries. (That was ‘change’, not ‘charge’.) Some of them are buried inside the case and others are accessible from the outside.
- If the reviews are dated and listed in order by date then all comments are relative to the date. And/or you could comment when a reviewed item is close to, not as good as, or better than your reference standards.
- One of may favorite ways would be if there was a page where they are ranked by performance/preference. They could be in categories and grouped when the performance is similar. This is done with PC gear and it helps to narrow the choices and compare value when on a budget.
I really like the Ruinova pack I built. It charges every single thing I’ve tried to plug into it, and it has a nice, almost upscale brushed aluminum case.
Most of these packs come with batteries but I found one just the DIY kit, and this is the one I started with:
Another cool device is the Waka Waka, which is more of an emergency lantern that happens to be a mobile USB charger, but it is rugged as heck and would be ideal on a boat or in the woods. Here is my review of it here:
I like having a bunch of different ones for the flexibility it gives me. For example, one of the solar power packs can give a partial charge to a bigger pack in case there’s a lot of sun. Or I can use the big pack to charge the Waka Waka and use the lantern all night
The solar powered battery pack is a very interesting idea.
The DIY kit wouldn’t suit the batteries I currently have as it says it supports 66mm batteries or less.
Thanks, that PB-2000 looks exactly like what I need
I just read the review, it’s an interesting idea. The guy in the review did say he left it in the sun for 3 days though and it only managed 50% charge, turned me off a bit to be honest.
We’re at a pretty high latitude here in Spokane, and I get similar (but slightly better) results with the one I linked on top. I think people just have unrealistic expectations about these solar chargers. And I still think you’d get decent results somewhere like a boat where it has direct sunlight 100% of the time. But yeah, to me these are mostly for emergencies and maybe for camping to top my devices off with some free juice.
