Shake shake torches

Tim-Gabz

Tim-Gabz

Joined
Nov 24, 2003
Messages
5,337
Some 18months back my wife bought me a cheap shake generator torch with LED. Bored in a Sandton power cut I got out my timer and it worked as 1m barely decent light 10min mediocre and 45 min to turn off. For some reason it failed sitting on the fridge and refused to work.

A friend uses one in Nigeria as batteries are counterfeit and recharging depends on power and fuel in the genset. Not a great option.

Are there any decent ones that are not just eco hype that people here use regularly. Something that can surplant a LED in a Nokia?
 
a friend bought some cheap ones like you are talking about. they were made in china and had batteries. the coil that generates power in the real shake lights has a lot of windings with a magnet inside. the cheap one has about 15 windings and the magnet was just a slug of steel. once the batteries were dead so was the light. a lot of the mailorder magazines carry them. a friend has one of the good ones but i cant remember who made it. i'll see if i can find out who made it and let you know.
 
richard j said:
a friend bought some cheap ones like you are talking about. they were made in china and had batteries. the coil that generates power in the real shake lights has a lot of windings with a magnet inside. the cheap one has about 15 windings and the magnet was just a slug of steel. once the batteries were dead so was the light. a lot of the mailorder magazines carry them. a friend has one of the good ones but i cant remember who made it. i'll see if i can find out who made it and let you know.
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Thanks, that is a bit of an eye opener. He has just found out that his N95 is a Chinese rip off. I have seen AA batteries immediately set to work cooking a camera (not even turned on?) in Nigeria. I would like a couple of torches (shakes) for my folks and friends in Zim who have not had power (this time) for 4 days. They use the Grand Cell solar garden lamps to charge their AA batteries for their torches.

Thanks
 
If you are good at soldering there are also mods to charge your cell phone from one of those shake flashlights.
 
there is a combination radio/flashlight that has a crank generator. it also has a cell phone charger that comes with it. i cant remember what brand it is but i'm sure you can find it using google
 
The crank kit sounds a much better option. The shake shakes seem alot of odd work for little return.

I have found a few and a couple in South Africa. Cell phone charging is a decent addition. I am frankly tired of multiple gadgets as is my friend and folks. I have sat in a hotel in Cameroon trying to charge a phone off a USB charger (laptop) trying to get an adaptor for all my kit, and yes it all died.
 
Botswana has one of, if not, the highest solar energy ratings. Zimbabwe and South Africa are similar.

Nigeria is appalling as it is either raining or about to rain. Pity they didn't check the specs of their new internet satellite before they stuck it on a rocket and sent it into space. Their frequency is not good under heavy cloud, $20m of cyberjunk (probably $10million for bribes? and the rest for the launch of the governor's old laptop, genset and transmitter).

I will check out some solar chargers. What I get is what is available on the shelves in South Africa. Mostly 2nd rate with a few exceptions. Bots is very short on gadgets in a population of 1.8million mostly rural/peasant stock. I believe that I own over half of non Chineses or SAK knives.
 
:oRegrettably it seems like the ones I had were the rip offs, the one my friend has is the same. I am thoroughly unimpressed. My friend is going to have one of those priceless moments checking the genset fuel levels when his one gives up the ghost.:rolleyes:

Unfortunately Africa is prone to dumping and counterfeit goods. I revert to well made goods through reputable channels, frequently disreputable prices. Africa is not a pleasant place for your kit to fail without backup.

I am going to avoid the shakers like the plague, treat them for what they are, as gimmicks, and try for solar chargers, my friend based in Nigeria is going to have to go with the crank.

Thanks for the inputs. Learn (of) a new trick every day...
 
The crank ones have worked much better than the shake ones, in my experience. Solar ones are decent, but not great. I think you need a completely sunny day to charge them really well. If you only need them for 30 mins or so a night, a solar one is probably fine even in cloudy conditions.

The crank ones seem to have a good bit of resistance when you are winding away, and even FEEL like they are storing more energy in comparison to the shake ones. I have a pretty nice crank one where each minute of cranking gets you something like 30 mins of light, plus it has multiple brightness levels. That might be over exaggerating, but the ratio is still pretty good. I keep that one in my car, just in case I lose the 50 battery powered flashlights I have on me at all times. :D
 
I've seen the kind that you crank,they sell them over here at Lowes and probably Home Depot,you could probably order them online from there.I've never used them but I thought they should work ok in a pinch.Anywhere that I've seen the shake lights sold,they were made in China and I've tried a few other LED lights that were made in China and lasted almost as long as a set of batteries,so I passed on the shake lights.
 
I had one of the shake lights, and it worked fine, recharged well, untill the battery fully died, I think it had to do with the coil needing to be charged to work well, like a car alternator, needs input to get output. I now have one of the dorcy crank lights as a loaner light, works good. Really tough about not getting good stuff, perhaps candle lanterns are a suitable alternative? at least they work!
 
Shake shakes are popular as I found people, sheeple, tend towards expecting gadgets to work first time and never get serviced?! Wow look at all those batteries I can save mentality.

When my wife bought them for me I expected them to be self rechargeble if in a glove box, that was a joke. Cars need torches and the heat here is not good for battery life.

Our power cuts are infrequent in Botswana and my mini mags and other battery kit suffice with a few Duracell that are genuine. That's me, but when the kids were smaller one could find that all 7 torches were flat if the kids had been playing. The kids torches and toys get rechargables of my torch batteries that are swapped out every few months.

Travel out of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia into other parts of Africa, and your chances of faux batteries and power cuts are very high. In Nigeria power cuts happen 2-3times an hour so gensets are essential. Add to this that the genset doesn't run after midnight normal batteries are consumed pretty well swiftly and rechargebles are ruined during the day with the power going on and off frequently.

I am going to cruise the electronic and hunting shops here (camping shops all full of faux brands CRT and Benchmade rippoffs included) and then have a look at what is in South African shops next week by way of crank lights.
 
cjpgeyer said:
just got the ccrane catalog www.ccrane.com and they have a shake light (item #NS3) that has a five year manufacturer's warranty. Have not tried it myself.
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I have taken a peek at that torch, and loads of other kit, on the CC site. Instead of rubber end buffers they use magnetic repulsion. They seem to have taken the concept seriously and made something that is effective.

With the make and pic in mind I will cast around local and regional markets for one that is similar ( I am looking at the crank ones too). The output seems ok, (better than poor) and they don’t make pretensions. I don’t feel the designs are advanced enough yet to produce a magnificent worker for $3.00 that other torches are going for. In short the others are not worth the $3 bucks but this one maybe worth the $27 they are asking.





I have been dismantling the remains of my son's one so he can use the wire making an electro magnet. Surprise, the copper is not coated and is tarnished meaning the coils looked good but did little to nothing.
 
I think one of the best I have seen is a flashlight/ am/fm/wb radio with cell phone charger, that can charge by solar, USB/or crank. Mine is made by Eton. I was given it for Christmas and it works great. The solar charging needs full sunshine to work very well, but the crank works great, and the USB charging is there for those that have it. It is a nice product.
Mine is the tiny FR150 microlink. they make great big ones also, but this little one seems to work great. In out last power outage it was our sole link to the news and weather. I have tons of flashlights and batteries so I used it more for the radio, but the three little led's work just fine for emergency lighting.
Here is a link http://www.etoncorp.com/GeneralMenu
 
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Omega brand shakelights are the real deal. Capacitor storage and a properly large copper winding shake generator, as well as a reed swith and the proper simple circuit to charge the cap.

From the looks of it it's a 5.5V 1F capacitor.

Dead simple.

Copper winding - bridge rectifier - capacitor - reed switch/led
 
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