Solar pocket panels where to find them?

[Bagheera]

Hi,

The use of more and more electronics using AA batteries in our scouting group has caused us to invest some money in a bunch of nice 1600 Milliamps AA Nickel Hydrid batteries and a good charger but that works only from 220 Volts.

I saw on Jeff Randalls site a so called "Jungle charger" and I'm wondering if there are other small solar pocket panels around that could do the job.

Any info would be welcome.

Best Scouting wishes from Holland,

Bagheera

 

Bagheera,

You can build your own by buying the cells, a blocking diode, and a soldering iron. The trick is producing the required voltage which should be higher than the voltage of the batteries you are charging. The next trick is trying to get the max miliamp output for the size of charger you want to produce. This is the real trick since you have to go to super efficient cells to maintain compactness with fast charge times. The charger we are doing produces 250 ma @ 7.2 volts. This will charge 4 AA Metal Hydride batteries (1.2 volts each) at a fast rate in full sunlight. We use solar to charge mini-DV camera batteries, run radios, scanners, etc. Drop me an email and I will help you out with something for your group. I have some cells that we experimented with that produce 200 ma @ 1.5 volts. I will send 4 of these over to you with a diode and all you will have to do is hook them in series (no soldering required) and hook up a battery holder and you'll be good to go.

Jeff

 

[Bagheera]

Hi Jeff,

I'll send you an e-mail for shure, thanks for the great offer , we'll return something "glowing" to you which doesn't require sunlight!

Thanks again, best scouting wishes from a rainy Holland,

Bagheera