Category Archives: DIY
Making MagSafes Again…
As we prep to get our solar MacBook chargers back in stock, we got together in our Brooklyn conference room to make some MagSafe adapters. They are not works of art, but they are functional. We splice used MagSafe adapters …
Read more
Solar Charger Tutorial – Part 3
Part 3: How (and why) do I store power? Sunlight is inconsistent and often nonexistent (think nightime) so storing power is important in many applications. In addition, many electronics are expecting a constant, specific Voltage with an ample power reserve. …
Read more
Solar Charger Tutorial – Part 2
Part 2: How much power am I generating? A solar panel does not do anything in isolation. It needs to be connected to something. That something is called a load. A load dissipates power and converts electrical energy to work. …
Read more
Solar Charger Tutorial – Part 1
How do Solar Chargers work? Introduction Solar chargers use solar energy to power my electronics, neat! How do they work? Short answer: Sunlight hits solar panels -> solar panels generate electricity -> electricity flows into battery -> battery outputs clean …
Read more
Preparing for Irene
Hurricane Irene is coming! Here in the NYC area, the crazy rush for last minute supplies has depleted stores of “D” and “C” cell batteries commonly used in portable radios and flashlights. In anticipation of this event, we’ve been charging …
Read more
Circuit Box Video Tour
Here’s a quick video tour of our Switchable Circuit Boxes. It starts out a bit out of focus, but settles in after a few seconds. We use the circuit boxes inside our products. They also allow DIYers to combine multiple …
Read more
Choosing USB Pin Voltages for iPhones and iPads
We continually make minor tweaks to the USB output of our batteries to make sure we charge as many devices as possible. We pay particular attention to Apple products and now, with the introduction of the iPad, it has become …
Read more
Adafruit Releases DIY Solar Charger
If you’ve always thought, “I can build that!”, now you can. The whip-smart crew at Adafruit has built an open hardware solar charger kit that has been thoroughly vetted. We’re pretty excited that this is available and think it is …
Read more
Solar Powered Wireless Sensor Networks
We met Chris Jefferies a few weeks back at Maker Faire. Turns out he is using our small solar panels to do something we’ve been interested in for a while. Chris is building wireless sensor networks using open source software …
Read more
Solar Power on the Streets
John Seefeldt is designing and implementing public installations that run on renewable resources. His first project has three of our small solar panels embedded in the roof of a street vendor’s cart in Asheville, NC. The panels power an iPhone …
Read more