We’re heading out to Mt. Washington for a backcountry ski trip and bringing along lots of USB devices to make our trip more fun. To understand the power needs for our solar chargers, we created a summary of our power needs across all of the devices.
Here’s the breakdown:
ECOROX Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker for music – 1,800mAh battery (6.7 Watt hours), 10 hour battery life. Lets assume 5 hours of use a day.
AAXA LED PICO to watch movies on snowbanks at night – 2,000mAh battery (7.4 Watt hours), 80 minute battery life. We need at least 103 minutes to get through Dazed and Confused.
Black Diamond Sprinter Headlamp so we can see – battery size unlisted, guessing about 1,000mAh (3.7 Watt hours), 6 hour battery life. Sun sets around 5:30, lets say 4 hours a day for morning and nighttime use.
Voltaic USB Touchlight – more lighting – no battery, can run 27 hours on a 15 Watt hour battery. 4 hours a day.
Sensordrone Monitor – battery size unlisted. This is more experimental so we’re ok if this runs out of juice.
iPhone for music and backup photography and communications when we have signal – 1420mAh (5.2 Watt hours) – plan to run it down every 12 hours or so.
In total, that comes to 28 Watt hours that we need to produce from batteries and / or solar power each day. Given the cold weather, lets bump that up by 20% to 34 Watt hours. Our plan is to bring 2 x Fuse 6Ws plus a 16 Watt Kit. The addition of the 16 Watt Kit is probably overkill, but when you work for a solar company, why not?
So, how’d the trip go? We shouldn’t have been that much of a power drain, depending on how you used the Sensordrone.
Curious to hear your findings!
Its actually still pending, waiting for the “go” signal from the guys up in NH. Bags (and sensordrone) are packed though.