Charging Electrical Stuff on Tour

With my own trip into the Wilds planned for next year, I find myself wondering about the accepted wisdom in keeping Electrical gadgets topped up.

I know there are Solar panels and dynamo hubs etc. but I don't know really how practical / effective these options are - I would rather avoid a dynamo hub to be honest - considering expense/weight/rolling resistance.

What sort of methods / products have people found success with?

Ta!

Never venturing more than walking distance from 240V socket is my preferred method.

Depends on what electrical things you need to power and how long you will be away from power.

Will you be riding at night?

If you are only riding during daylight hours, your power needs are much, much less.

A backlight on any LCD screen like a phone or Garmin will really clobber battery life, so make sure all backlighting is off when you don't need it, and kept to the bare minimum brightness when you do.

If you are going to be in an area of poor phone reception, and don't mind missing incoming calls, switch your phone off when you aren't using it, as it will chew great lumps of power trying to keep connected to a network if the signal levels are low.

As a lot of things can now be charged up via a USB port these days, like Garmin, phones, etc I use LiPo battery packs with in-built USB ports. They have high energy density (lots of capacity in small weight and size). I use a fairly small one from Maplin, if I'm away from power for a couple of days. - http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/lithium-ion-5000mah-portable-power-bank-n98kq

You can keep a Garmin 800 going for a week of daytime-only use on one of those, if you keep the backlight off.

See also http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/mobile-phone/3534490/26-best-power-banks-2014-2015-uk/

You can periodically recharge the Battery pack if you have occasional access to mains power and remember to take the mains adapter with you, with the correct power prong adapter if you are going outside UK.

Most important - do a trial run well before you go, to make sure you know the time limitations for your particulat collection of kit, and take more fully charged battery packs if you need more. And keep everything dry, or your plans will fall apart.

I would go for dynamo lights if you will be doing extended night time riding, as your lights will likely be the biggest drain of power and carrying a lot of pre-stored power in batts will be a pain on a long trip.

Solar is not really practical on the bike IMO.

HTH

Fantastic post. Thank you.

I'm going to be camping / day riding for a month down the USA, so power sockets will be a rarity - I principally want power for a tablet PC / ipod etc. Music for the daytime ride & Something to read at the camp site.

Cheers for the links!
DM

+1 for all that up there, those battery packs are great.

Seriously considering buying a cheap payg mobile for taking on camping trips etc.

Am I remembering through rose tinted glasses or did phone batteries really used to need charged weekly rather than daily?

Yeah I had a cheap nokia for this reason, battery lasts months on standby and days with full use.

and @D_Mars Just invest in a dynamo, if you won't be near a mains charger for 2-3h every few days.
If stopping for dinner/lunch or so each day, you can charge the battery pack then no issue. But maybe go for a 15000 or so one as that will last 4days without a top up charge.

Dynamo hubs can be expensive, agreed, but there's essentially no drag with the good ones these days. (This CTC article (pdf) offers a useful guide.) I'm currently touring with a Schmidt Son 28, and it's been terrific. Paired with a PedalPower+ Super-i-Cable, it charges everything we're carrying (iPod, mobile, e-reader, GPS, camera) except our tablet, which needs more power than the dynamo can provide. Portable battery packs should be able to charge a tablet, but they wouldn't be able to charge much (if anything) else once they've done so.

there's that german "forumslader" half diy half prebuilt dynamo charger, seems to be the best choice at the moment ,making use of higher currents at high velocitys , good efficiency and so on..
i didnt get to use one in person yet though, have gone without electronics or rather a simple brick phone and a low power headlamp

I am coming around to the dynamo hub option.

It's pricey and draggy but the benefits of unlimited power are hard to ignore!

I toured for 3 months with a SON28, Theplug II and Dynamo lights front and rear.

It was enough to continuously power my iPhone 5 which was mounted on the bars and using the MotionX app for mapping and pre-downloaded maps/route. I switched off the screen when I needed to conserve battery or charge faster. A sometimes forgotten point is that you don't need network reception or data connection for the GPS on your phone to work - so you can switch off cellular/data to conserve battery, as long as you pre-download the maps.

There was not enough power to charge the phone and have the lights on at the same time, so if you plan to do a lot of night riding then you'll need additional power. I also used a USB battery and charged it at campsites which I stayed at every few days - mostly i wild camped. The extra juice was used when I wanted to do other stuff on my phone when camped for the night. I needed to charge some hefty DSLR batteries anyway so could not go completely off-grid.

ThePlug II only charges at 500 mA which is a slow trickle - much less than your standard 1amp USB socket on your computer. The B&M eWerk has switchable voltages/currents so you could technically charge those larger batteries, but I'm not sure if the hub can supply that much power at reasonable touring speeds, so realistically if you need to charge at >500mA you'll probably want a solar powered setup eg. Powermonkey.

so you can switch off cellular/data to conserve battery, as long as you pre-download the maps.

For the iPhone, I found Galileo to be excellent for free maps, and can be use with gpx files.

2nd this. It's an offline thing too. So once maps downloaded doesn't need data.