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phone charging

divebuddy

divebuddy

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I went down to Lidl as I saw they had small solar chargers for £9.99.
Didn't go soon enough as they were all sold out!
So I got something else to do a similar job for £7.99. It's a torch which can be charged from a USB port or from the car socket. It can then charge your phone from the back of the torch.
Tried it out this evening and all seems to work well. Pictures attached. It has a li-on battery but with different
end contacts. I'll let you know how I get on with it.
DSC_0011.JPG
DSC_0012.JPG
DSC_0013.JPG
 
divebuddy said:
I went down to Lidl as I saw they had small solar chargers for £9.99.
Didn't go soon enough as they were all sold out!
So I got something else to do a similar job for £7.99. It's a torch which can be charged from a USB port or from the car socket. It can then charge your phone from the back of the torch.
Tried it out this evening and all seems to work well. Pictures attached. It has a li-on battery but with different
end contacts. I'll let you know how I get on with it.
View attachment 9666 View attachment 9667 View attachment 9668
Click to expand...
It sounds like a novel piece of kit Dick but I would be interested to hear how much charging the phone drains the actual torch battery
 
Started charging at 20.30 with phone at 30% charge. 90 minutes and it's up to 60% and still green light from the charging battery. Battery voltage was 4.11 volts at the start. I'll report back when the charge is completed. So far so good.
 
OK so the final bit of info. The phone charged to 80% and then the green led indicator went out on the back of the torch. I checked the voltage on the torch battery and it had dropped to 3.3 volts. The torch still operated ok so that must be the threshold or balance point between the phone battery and the torch battery. So I reckon it's a good emergency back up but will only give one useful charge before needing a boost itself. Going to charge up the battery and see what happens when I charge the phone from a higher % point.
 
Charged the torch battery to 4.07 volts. Attached phone on 66% and it took it up to 93% before stopping.
Think it will be ok.
 
If the general build quality is ok you can make it a better power pack by replacing the internal battery with a quality one
 
It's a weird battery Lee. I'll have to put a picture up. Seems to have two contacts at one end and one at the other.
 
Post pics of it up mate, i suspect it's a 18650, r132a battery or similar but if it has 2 connectors coming from one end it might be a battery with some type of new regulator or other circuit unit enclosed within, the above batteries have a small protection circuit enclosed within the top of the battery for use when used in items that charge them, the second wire could be for a possible lower voltage line out, or the solar in line that has been included in the sit on top protection unit. Does the second wire come from the + on the battery?
 
I'll put some pics up tomorrow. It's got concentric circular contacts at one end and single contact at second end. The end cap of the torch has concentric spring contacts.
 
here are the pics of the torch body contacts and the battery. As you can see it is not same as usual 18650 type.
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Looks like a protected 18650 probably around or less than 1.5 amp you could swap it for a quality branded genuine 3.5 amp 18650 and see a huge difference. Or even get a quality 18650 from old laptop battery pack, for this chargers price it will be a very cheap and low power 18650 battery included, that one isn't even branded a single proper 1860 high power battery are £25 each lol

Don't believe the 2200mah printed on that battery lol
 
As I missed the solar charger at Lidl I got one off ebay for less than a tenner posted from China.
DSC_0012.JPG
DSC_0013.JPG
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Waterproo...540407?hash=item44000ba977:g:T6QAAOSw32lYy7yO
I will do some testing and report back. So far from fully charged it has taken my phone from 46% to 82% in an hour which I think is pretty good. I will re-charge it tomorrow using what sunshine we have and post up results.
( update another 45 mins and fully charged phone with two bars of energy left in the charging unit)
 
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