Originally Posted by RJ
I have a bunch of those and they're handy. I've not measured charge times. I use them in the evening and throw them in the sun in the morning. WAG, they're pretty charged by lunch-ish.
I have a bunch of those and they're handy. I've not measured charge times. I use them in the evening and throw them in the sun in the morning. WAG, they're pretty charged by lunch-ish.
الدهون القاع الفتيات لك جعل العالم هزاز جولة الذهاب
During the last multi-day power outage we had, I noticed that the harsh cold white light most LED's emit becomes rather annoying and unpleasant when you have to live by that light for hours on end. Do any of the lanterns mentioned here, or any other ones for that matter, have a more pleasant, neutral tint?
Edit: The above question was intended partially as a FYI to others, but this topic did remind me that I never did upgrade our existing battery of lanterns. I seem to recall I might have asked this before, but at that time I was left with some doubt as to how well some product or another might work for my needs. For my use, I am only interested in lights that operate with widely available primary cells. (I distrust the long term reliability of rechargeable batteries, and while solar is nice, for some strange reason in my life emergency situations and other such events never seem to happen during nice and sunny days. No, it always has to be cold, wet and dark when things go wrong, and if/when it's daylight hours the cloud coverage is so thick it just as well might not be.)
Last edited by That Guy; 10-29-2020 at 02:51 AM.
I know this won't be very useful for many but this is what I put together for such occasions;
The 26 Ah (26,000 mAh) deep-cycle battery is charged via the solar collector. In the photos above, you can see a standard 12V marine socket on the far left which various lights, Li-ion battery chargers, etc. can be plugged into.
I converted (so far) two ordinary table lamps to 12V operation by replacing the 120V bulbs with 12V LED bulbs (60 watt incandescent equivalent) intended for use in the 12V DC systems (such as campers). The standard 120V plugs were replaced with 12V male plugs that fit the 12V socket. I have a duplex adapter that plugs into the socket that allows two 12V devices to be plugged into the single 12V socket, so I can run both lamps. I haven't clocked the runtime of this setup, but it is in excess of 24 hours.
I use these converted lamps every day as the lights in the bedroom. I use a 12V "wall wart" transformer that plugs into a standard 120V switch outlet and wired another duplex adapter into the 12V output terminal of the wall wart. Hit the wall switch in the bedroom and the lights come on normally, just like any other 120V light. When the power goes out, plug them into my "solar generator" shown above, which I keep charged and ready-to-go for such emergencies.
Then of course there is the array of flashlights I own, which I can keep charged via the "solar generator."
Geez, I'm such a nerd....
Getting to test our this morning thanks to Zeta! Went out at 2:00 a.m. CDT
I don't see it that way. Rather, I think that's pretty neat. Of course, I've been thinking/dreaming about a setup where I'd have a fixed solar panel charging a fixed location deep cycle battery, and the whole house is wired for separate 12V lights. In case of a power outage it's just a matter of flipping a switch, and the whole house has light once again. The only things stopping me from actually doing this are laziness, lack of money and lack of time. Especially that laziness part.
IDPA SSP classification: Sharpshooter
F.A.S.T. classification: Intermediate
Just for lighting, scaling-up is easy. To carry loads like refrigerators and well pumps, it becomes a much different proposition. For that I still depend on a conventional generator.
"I distrust the long term reliability of rechargeable batteries"
I don't trust the long term reliability of non-rechargeable batteries :-)
1)We were early adopters of Eneloops. We had pretty much completely converted by 2010. We have dozens of them, maybe 100, I don't know. I have had exactly one fail in that time. So I'd argue the batteries themselves are reliable.
2)Alkalines have a nasty tendency to leak when they sit in something for a few years. Sometimes even before the 'Expiration Date' printed on them. Sure, you can store all your emergency lights w/o batteries, but then you have to put the batteries in when you need it. When I come up on a wreck on a dark and stormy night, I want to yank the emergency flashlight out of the glovebox and have it work, not grab it and then add (hopefully not leaking) batteries. To put it another way, my experience has been that a light with eneloops is more likely to work when I grab it than one with alkalines,
3)I'm speaking of alkalines and eneloops here - you can buy lithium primaries, for example, but they get pretty spendy, which leads to...
4)With a few dozen eneloops and a setup like NH Shooters above, I can keep not just all my lights and walkie talkies running indefinitely, I can keep half the neighborhood running too, indefinitely. And I can do so a lot cheaper than stockpiling enough lithium primarys to do the same. Even with alkalines, which cost about one fourth what alkalines do, I can recharge eneloops a lot more than 4 times.
Note that I'm generally speaking of AA and AAA batteries here. There are edge cases - as mentioned above, devices that take a single 123 can be a problem - the rechargeable ones have a lot lower energy density than primaries (which, oddly, doesn't seem to be true of 2x123 vs 18650). 9V NiMH have somewhat the same problem (although I still use them for some things, because they don't leak). You will find the occasional device that doesn't like the lower voltage of NiMH, or the higher voltage of Li-ion. NiMH C and D cells are fairly scarce, etc, etc. But overall, I think the complete 'system' of rechargeables is actually more robust than a stack of primarys, all things considered. YMMV, or course!!!
Perhaps, but you have lots of company.
I have my HAM station built into a Pelican case. It can run off a battery (LiFePo), 12v (car outlet) or 120V. I can simultaneously run off 120V and charge the battery as well. I considered adding solar charge capability when I built it a few years ago but got distracted. Solar has come a long way down the cost curve and up the convenient packaging curve since then. Might be time to revisit.
Yours looks well done. Thanks for sharing.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
Parts list with step by step assembly directions please. This maybe just the project I need to keep busy with while staying @ home. Very impressive, thanks for showing/sharingI know this won't be very useful for many but this is what I put together for such occasions;
The 26 Ah (26,000 mAh) deep-cycle battery is charged via the solar collector. In the photos above, you can see a standard 12V marine socket on the far left which various lights, Li-ion battery chargers, etc. can be plugged into.
I converted (so far) two ordinary table lamps to 12V operation by replacing the 120V bulbs with 12V LED bulbs (60 watt incandescent equivalent) intended for use in the 12V DC systems (such as campers). The standard 120V plugs were replaced with 12V male plugs that fit the 12V socket. I have a duplex adapter that plugs into the socket that allows two 12V devices to be plugged into the single 12V socket, so I can run both lamps. I haven't clocked the runtime of this setup, but it is in excess of 24 hours.
I use these converted lamps every day as the lights in the bedroom. I use a 12V "wall wart" transformer that plugs into a standard 120V switch outlet and wired another duplex adapter into the 12V output terminal of the wall wart. Hit the wall switch in the bedroom and the lights come on normally, just like any other 120V light. When the power goes out, plug them into my "solar generator" shown above, which I keep charged and ready-to-go for such emergencies.
Then of course there is the array of flashlights I own, which I can keep charged via the "solar generator."
Geez, I'm such a nerd....
The downside is that with long runs of low-voltage DC wiring, the voltage drop can be a significant percentage of the operating voltage. You might need a larger wire gauge than you'd expect.I don't see it that way. Rather, I think that's pretty neat. Of course, I've been thinking/dreaming about a setup where I'd have a fixed solar panel charging a fixed location deep cycle battery, and the whole house is wired for separate 12V lights. In case of a power outage it's just a matter of flipping a switch, and the whole house has light once again. The only things stopping me from actually doing this are laziness, lack of money and lack of time. Especially that laziness part.
The low current draw of LED bulbs has made this less of a problem for lighting.
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