Hope this fits here.
It’s not much in the grand scheme, but all of my everyday carry electronics are all solar charged.
Left to right: Cat S22 Flip smartphone, Bluetooth earbuds, rechargable pen light/laser pointer/black light/dog toy, and my Kobo e-reader.
They’re mostly charged / topped up overnight from my 12W / 8000 mAh solar battery bank. I just throw it outside or in a window during the day and plug a USB hub into it to charge my devices overnight. My phone will usually go 2-3 days on a charge, but I’ve also got a 6W panel I stick in the window if it needs a little battery boost during the day. I also top off other things from the 6W panel, but those aren’t exclusively solar like my EDC stuff.
Thought I was going to have to cheat a week or so ago. It was rainy and cloudy for nearly 2 weeks, and the solar battery bank was struggling to stay above 50%, but the clouds finally broke and my solar bank was able to fully recharge with a few hours of sunlight to spare.
Like I said, it’s not much, but these have only ever been charged from solar**, and I think that’s pretty cool.
** Except the bit of charge my phone and e-reader got from my laptop when I had it plugged into USB to flash firmware and add files.
My solar battery bank. (Not the best design with an integrated, non-removable battery, but has worked well enough)
I also have a foldable one that directly discharges to USB. Never really occurred to me to charge a USB power bank with it during the day though 😅
It’s very useful to charge my video drone during camping trips though.
Never really occurred to me to charge a USB power bank with it during the day though
Lol. I used to just charge things directly, but I found it was less fuss to just charge a big power bank and then charge the rest of my stuff from that later. There’s some efficiency loss with that method, but I don’t have to spend my relaxation time worrying about resource management and swapping devices around.
Ngl. I’m an apple fan boy.
But. That cat22 has come across my mind quite a few times over the last few weeks.
I realize it’s not for everyone, but I absolutely love this thing. My old smartphone has been demoted to wifi tablet when I need it, but it mostly lives in my bag.
Did you get this phone so you use it less? Or what’s your reason for having this little guy? Genuinely curious.
Several reasons, but digital detoxing was one of the goals.
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Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could go 30 days in the modern world with a dumb phone. This one was actually cheaper than the other dumb phone I was looking at but was more capable (I also liked that I could re-purpose it after the experiment was over). I just disabled a lot of its functionality for the 30 day challenge to dumb it down to just what a modern dumb phone can do. Challenge was successful, but afterward, for quality of life, I re-enabled the app store, browser, and allowed myself some basic apps (bank, TOTP, email, Matrix, etc).
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I’m beyond bored with the “tall skinny rectangle” form factor and wanted to try something different. I’m old enough that T9/tap typing is still in my muscle memory, so that was a surprisingly easy transition. Only took me about a day to get back into the full swing of it.
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I spent too much time doom scrolling. During the 30 day challenge, I cut out most of that by way of not having it available. Afterward, the small screen and weird form factor kind of helped reinforce that. I do have a Lemmy client on there, lol, and have posted from it.
After using it for 30 days, I found that I just didn’t really miss my tall skinny rectangle all that much and decided to stick with it (after un-dumbing it). I still keep my actual smartphone in my bag if I need it, but it’s mostly just a mini wifi tablet that sees occasional use.
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This is vert cool and inspiring. I would like to try to use more solar energy. Do you have a recommendation for a solar charger?
It depends on your use case, but this one is on my wish list. (Amazon link) The small ones that are the size of regular power banks will take a week or more to fully charge and should be avoided as junk. I’d also recommend avoiding any that have integrated batteries (more below).
The one I have is discontinued, but it’s the iClever 12W solar with integrated 8000 mAh battery. It’s not the best design with the integrated battery that sits out in the sun all day. It will often overheat and stop charging until it cools down, so I have to check on it periodically. Luckily, with what I’m charging with it, I only ever run it down to about 60-70% most days, and it will charge back up before it gets too hot out in the sun. I’ve used it since 2020, and it’s still going strong (I try not to deplete it below 40% which I think helps keep the battery happy).
Those are good for backpacking/travel as well as around the house.
It’s a lot less portable, but for camping, I’ve got a 12v 50 watt panel that I hooked a 12v 45 watt USB-C power delivery adapter into. That will give me 5-20 volts DC at up to 45 watts. I mostly top off my big power bank from that, but it has also charged my laptop easily.
And bookmarked! As an electrician with a soldering kit I barely use, this is as good a reason as any.
Plus, maybe I can figure out a good way to top off my power tools!
What kind of phone is that?
Cat S22 Flip. Low-end smartphone running Android in a dumb phone form factor. Bought it for a 30 day challenge / digital detox and ended up loving it and kept using it as my daily driver.
So cool!!! I felt inspired to do the same. Some day I’ll post my own solar-powered setup
This is cool. When I get a chance, I wanna submit one of these too.
