Powerfilm R15 - 600 Solar Battery Charger Unrolling & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
902 words · ~4 min read
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Welcome to the Power Film Solar R15600 rollable solar charger
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unboxing. That's the entire unboxing. So, let's go ahead and let's uh walk
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through some of the things that are interesting about this. So, you can charge or direct power 12vt systems such
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as the things listed here. Although for my purposes, I'm mostly interested in
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not necessarily military vehicles, but more along the lines of, you know, okay,
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not car batteries, but like electronics and stuff. Haha. Charge wireless
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electronics. So, charge the internal batteries of your laptop, satellite
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phone, GPS, cell phone, PDA, internal batteries, etc. You can charge regular
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batteries, including whatever else you can connect to it. So, this guy, the
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600, is a 10 watt
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uh solar charger operating at 6 amps.
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Although you can get a 5 watt or a 20 watt version. It weighs 1
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lb. Yeah. Okay. It's not that heavy.
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Complete with 15 ft of wire and O-ring connectors. A 3-year warranty. Durable
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construction with marine grade components. UV resistant and weatherproof. Performs well in diverse
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conditions, including both hot and cloudy environments. That's kind of cool. Can roll around a 3-in diameter
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and wraps around wraparound fasteners to keep rolled. So, let's have a look at
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it. And we're going to try it out, of course.
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So, this is the kind of thing you might take with you on a camping trip when you don't want your uh you know your game
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console or your laptop or whatever else to run out of battery while you're while
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you're away. Do not fold or crease. So, that's important. You roll not fold or
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crease. Also, you roll with this side out. Here's the included connector which
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looks somewhat complicated to be perfectly honest. Let's see how this
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works here. So, 15 ft cord. So, this is
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your positive and that's your negative.
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And then this guy plugs right into here.
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So, I was hoping it would have something more along the lines of like a a USB
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connector or something like that. So, it's 12vt solar powered battery
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charger. And how
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pretel do I connect this to
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something? Maybe there are
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accessories. Well, you know what? We can just fire it up with a multimeter and
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then we'll worry about that later. Give me a sec here, guys. So, I had to go get
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batteries for my multimeter just to uh to film this little test for you guys
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here. But you can see that even in this room where we've only got uh the window
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open there, it's producing about 3
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volts. So hold on, let's just Yeah, there we go. And then if we want to go
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ahead and switch
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to ammeter, let's see how many amps that
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is. Oh, hold on. I need to go there.
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Fascinating. So, let's take it outside. It's a cloudy day, but it
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claims to perform in cloudy conditions. So, let's see how it does. So, here we are in the yard and
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I'm rigging it up here. Aha. Now, we're getting about 9.4
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volts. So, we're still not getting quite the 12vt rated output, but if you have a
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look at the weather, it's actually starting to get a little bit dim uh in
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the evening here. And it's a completely overcast day.
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So getting about see. Yeah. So we're
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getting about 11 amps out of it or milliamps, whatever that is. I can never
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remember. I very very rarely use my stupid multimeter. So for anyone who
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knows what that means is at the 200M setting and I forget. So there you go.
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Oh, there's the problem, right? No, no, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh,
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yeah. No, that one's good for
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milliamps. So, let's hook it up to that one and let's see if we can get it right
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there. This way, I'll know for sure. Sorry, guys. I
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apologize. Okay, so that was milliamps
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then. Cool. Okay, so 11 milliamps. What'
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I get? 12 volts, 9 volts, 9 volt, something like that. Okay, my assistant
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doesn't care. Um, basically, yeah, I went to the I went and I checked out
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sort of what kind of accessories you have in terms of what you can hook up to it, and there are some approved
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accessories, but it looks more like kind of a uh a DIY type product right now or
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like a build your own solution around it type of product. Um, you you can get um
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a car lighter adapter so you can use it to charge your car battery if you're
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ever like totally screwed. Um, having something like this in your car might
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not be a bad idea. As far as charging electronics goes, it's going to be a little bit trickier to get it set up cuz
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you're probably going to have to make your own adapters. But if you are handy with soldering iron, it's definitely an
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option. So, thank you for checking out my little unboxing and un rolling of the
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power film solar. Don't forget to subscribe to List Tech Tips for
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