Traveling with Too Many Chargers? 131
MotorMachineMercenar wonders: "I just took a roadtrip over a long weekend and noticed that I need to lug around too many chargers. I have a charger for my cell phone, Nintendo DS Lite, my two digital cameras and an iPod. Sometimes I will have one for a portable HDD and laptop. In addition I have to carry a plug converter as some of them have been bought overseas. That's up to eight gadgets just to give juice my power-hungry devices, and they take precious space and weight in my bags. Is there any way to limit the number of chargers without gimping my roadwarrior gear? Most devices have more or less fixed batteries, 'smart' chargers and proprietary plugs, but is it possible as DIY, or is there an existing product? I'd like to see a universal charger for which plugs for any current device with the flexibility to add more in the future. What are the limitations and caveats with 240 vs 120, wattage, cutting and connecting cables, and so forth?"
Easy! (Score:5, Informative)
There are also the alkaline/lithium battery powered auxillury chargers, most of which are universal with multiple connecters. You can also use the solar chargers, most of which include a DC car socket.
I think that sooner than later, everything small will charge from USB and everything larger will have automatically switching power supplies that can run from any typical power source without adaptation.
IGo and others (Re:Easy!) (Score:2)
Re:IGo and others (Re:Easy!) (Score:4, Funny)
Yours etc.,
Slashdot Martyr Brigades, Inappropriate Homophone Encouragement Division
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Re:IGo and others (Re:Easy!) (Score:4, Funny)
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I even have a tip that works with my battery charger - works with AAA, AA and 9V batteries. Best prese
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USB-based charging rocks for cellphones (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, my next Nokia phone couldn't use it, because it needed more amperage or some other un
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Splashpower (Score:1)
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The iGo gets expensive quickly, but it has some major advantages. Once you buy the base unit, adding another tip is easy. It's much easier to keep track of where one power adapter is plugged in rather than five or six, and most of your devices don't need to charge at the same time.
The iPod tips are fidgety, though... the cheaper wallpower8 wall wart doesn't seem to have enough juice to wake certain iPod models up to the idea that they're being charged. You'll want to spend the extra 30 bucks for t
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http://gomadic.com/ [gomadic.com]
http://boxwave.com/ [boxwave.com]
Proprietary (Score:1)
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only this one (Score:1, Funny)
Asking the wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
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What - he should take things that use replaceable batteries? Would you say that if he only needed 1 charger for all of them?
I think it'd be nice if everything ran off a Nokia phone charger. That's one charger I always carry (when going away) no matter what else I take. It's 5 or 6 volts (can't remember!) so it should do for stuff that you power (as oppose to charge) as well
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and they are shoving them on everything.. i recently boguht a boster box.. (a self contained box to jump cars) and it had a damn USB port on it.. why.. someone te
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Oh look honey: Someone who gets to travel for pleasure, not business. How quaint.
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use usb (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:use usb (Score:4, Insightful)
I did have to purchase a couple of USB-power adapters for devices that didn't already have one (e.g. my phone), but those take up minimal space, especially if you can find them in something like a zip-link auto-winder.
Re:use usb (Score:4, Informative)
I carry along a USB hub and power supply as my "charger". I can plug 4 devices into it for charging. Works great.
Powered USB hub == cheap iPod charger (Score:2)
Or you can get a powered USB hub for about $10, and if you don't plug it into your computer, the iPod's happy. USB 1.1 hubs have become really cheap now that USB2 is out, and for low-speed devices like mice, keyboards,
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After-market business plan (Score:2)
That's about right. By changing the specs just enough to require new accessories they've created an additional market that they can control. They could make a slight modification to their power interface, patent it, and then
Re:use usb -- too slow (Score:2, Informative)
When you charge on the road, you want to get fully charged as fast as possible. Being able to charge two things at once is even better. Basically if you travel a lot, the iGo is the best solution. A gift you give yourself. There is a competing product from Kensington but afaik it's only at Circuit City an
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Proprietary (Score:4, Insightful)
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Besides, I don't know any dSLRs, portable gaming devices or phones which use (mini)USB for charging.
Motorola (Score:2)
What about all the wall-warts... (Score:1, Insightful)
USB charging as a standard is a great idea, but I'd like the world to move to a high-voltage + low-voltage standard.
Imagine: You have your standard outlet (by the conventions of your nation, of course), and you also have a low-voltage tap at each outlet. That low-voltage puts out a standardized voltage, has a standard current rating suita
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How do you provide the low voltage to the tap in a more efficient manner than what could be done with a wall-wart?
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So at what point does the idle energy saved pay for the expense of the dedicated device, the additional wiring, the line losses pumping low volt DC from my basement up two stories to my bedroom? If every room in all buildings aren't so wired, the benefits, the flexibility of cheap wall-warts are lost.
There is no reason such sophisticated circuitry could and would not be designed into wall warts come the t
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It will cost less because less idle current will be needed.
It *might* be more convenient if it is designed properly (a lot of people find the power bricks cumbersome and annoying to travel with, for example.)
It isn't flexible in and of itself, but if the voltages are standardized the user will have more interchangeability regarding cables and
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2 - Less idle current will not be needed if you must have transformers in outlets in all sorts of public places waiting for people to possibly plug in. It won't cost less because the expense of this one-powersupply-to-rule-them-all will never be regained when wall warts vampire away less than one dollar a year each.
3 - Standa
Overvoltage (Score:3, Funny)
Well they're pretty much the same. In both cases you've got about a 9% overvoltage condition.
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Did you fall asleep in the 80s, and just wake up? It's been 120V in the US for many years now.
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Or in my neck of the woods, it is called "well within normal tolerances".
It has to get up to 133V-ish before they will do anything about it. :/
When travelling only? (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a power standard. We need standard plugs, and two or three standard DC voltages. Say 12 volts and 5 volts. Maybe 9 volts too. That way we can buy a single large power supply to power all these little devices from one source. Even if we used a regular power supply that a computer uses, we could probably run everything off that. Scanners, USB drives, cell phone chargers, switches, hubs, Linksys firewall appliances, EVERYTHING.
And, it should be a standard that every device has an IN plug and an OUT plug so not everything has to be plugged directly into the main DC power source. You should be able to chain a few USB drives off your little 8 port ethernet switch, all of them drawing power from the big DC power supply.
I think that this is something I could make some money with. Put a computer power supply in a box. Sell it with some connectors and adaptors. You're done, and you've got lots of plugs and much less wire tangle.
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Sony likes to sell chargers.
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That's why they have so many different ones.
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A DC power supply in a computer can put out a lot of power. A random 480W ATX power supply I googled for puts out 36 Amps at 5 volts, and 16 amps at 12 volts. A Linksys hardware firewall device needs approxi
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Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards. What's 15 AMPS? Oh yea, that's what a single socket is rated at, at 90 volts RMS. We're not going to even come close to the limit of a single socket with out 500 watt ATX power supply. I don't know why you're worried about the house wiring. That's got a circuit breaker on it, and my 500 watt power supp
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Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards.
400A service into a residential house is enormous. Most single family homes have between 100A and 200A service.
In terms of thickness of the wire, for 15A of current, you want a 14 guage copper wire. It's not all that thick. Your 1500W hair dryer is going to pull damn near 15A, and will definately have 14 guage wire. Most other household devices
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Household supply is measured in Amps, not in Watts. Get it through your head. I agree, a 500watt supply won't burn down your house. 100A supply at 120V will provide 12kVA of power. Given a decent power factor, you could power 20 500W supplies from the standard household service.
-dave
Universal Power Adapter (Score:2, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1)
Firewire portable HDD (Score:1)
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And people laugh at me for this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Make sure to only buy devices that take AA/AAA batteries. Then you just need to carry a few extra NiMH recharcheables, and a single charger will take care of all your portable electricity needs every night while you sleep.
You can also get AA-to-12VDC converters, which will work with anything that can accept a car cigarette-lighter plug (make sure to get one that works with rechargeables, though, which for NiMH run at 1.2V rather than 1.5V... That doesn't matter much for up to four batteries, but at 8+ batteries, it can make some unprepared devices fail).
It amazes me that so many people put up with devices that have their own built-in non-replaceable incompatible-with-everything batteries. Rechargeables do eventually die. In exchange for five minutes of research up-front, you can save yourself a dozen different chargers and the need to replace various portable products (*cough* early iPods *cough*) yearly for no better reason than a dead battery.
Personally, I follow the above advice religiously. If my phone dies, I pop open my GPS and bam, I can call for help. If my GPS dies in the middle of a long hike, my camera makes the (temporary) ultimate sacrifice, and I can once again find my car. If my camera dies just as a UFO full of Elvis impersonators lands in front of me, always have an 8-pack of spares available, compatible with every device I carry. And when I get home or back to the car after draining every battery I own, a single charger restores them all to life in just a few hours.
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WTF
Sorry, couldn't resist.
My phone I will admit doesn't directly take AAs. But it lasts about four days on a charge, and has a car charger (but even if not, you could get an I-go or Energi for about $20) that works just fine on any 12VDC power source - Such as the one I mentioned in my previous post.
Perhaps I should have phrased it as "get things that take AA, or 12VDC, or have a
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I'd rather lug around the 5+ chargers than limit myself to a very small subset of each device category based on its charging scheme alone. Features such as c
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Of course, I already had the charger, since everything from my mp3 player to my LED flashlight uses AA.
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Then you have chosen your current problem, and voted with your wallet to perpetuate the everything-has-its_own-wall-wart and $100-non-user-serviceable-battery-replacement scams.
You couldn't get by with a plain ol' GBA, which did take AAs? You couldn't pick any of the literally dozens of non-Apple portable music players that take a single AAA (b
Common denomonator... (Score:2)
In a car? No problem, just use the car charger straight. Inside with an outlet? Just plug
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Kensington Smart Plug (Score:2)
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Isun Battpak solar charger (AC/DC/Solar) (Score:1)
Minisync (Score:2)
I have a handful of these for most of my gizmos, and since most devices need only an hour or two a day of charging, a single laptop USB port is probably plenty.
My 12'' laptop with charger and all devices USB (Score:1)
So, with one powered device (my laptop), I can charge all my others devices
Not enough current (Score:2)
If you connect an unpowered USB hub to your laptop, then the total power supplied to all the ports on the hub cannot add up to more than 2.5 watts, minus a fraction to power the hub itself. You can't efficiently charge more than one device at a time through this hub.
If your USB hub is powered by a wall wart, then each of its ports can supply the full 2.5 watts
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Universal AC adapter? (Score:2)
I have a question for you... Has everyone in the world forgotten about universal AC adapters?
Seems like they were pretty common in the 80s, but somehow everyone has completely forgotten about them.
It's pretty simple, you buy the universal AC adapter [shop.com], select the voltage and polarity, and plug-in the tip that fits your device (for some odd plugs, you may have to buy the appropriate tips seperately).
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Don't do this. The ones I've seen are rated for less than 1000mA (usually only 500mA for the cheap ones) which isn't even close to enough for any recent gadget. For example, my MP3 player draws 1500mA, my PDA draws 2400mA. If it is not rated for the current necessary, the adapter may overheat, possibly enough to start a fire.
The universal laptop adapter is a safe bet, but, as the parent poster pointed ou
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The cheap model I linked to is 800mA.
Those devices of are the exceptions, not the rule. But yes, you should be mindful of the current-draw required.
That is actually very unlikely. More often, the hig
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Ooooh great Smashdot... (Score:2)
You need Splashpower! (Score:2)
Pity it's not ready yet...!
Too many DC plugs (Score:2)
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Perhaps people like Dell and Nintendo are using their own proprietary plugs so that people don't buy a cheapo universal charger which is shoddily designed and blows up their equipment.
They would argue that it's a matter of quality control
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Solio - Solar Power / Mains Chargeable too (Score:1)
I have a Solio [www.solio.com] - it is sold as charging via solar power, but you can also charge it from the mains - it comes with specialised tips (iPod, phones etc), but also a standard USB female - great for when you don't have a laptop around or, indeed, no outlet socket at all
I Highly recommend them both for their utility and ecological low impact.
Those are mostly small chargers (Score:2)
Look for interchangable parts. (Score:2)
I can charge anyting while in a car with the pocket inverter. Everyting works on 120 or 240 volt excep
Ah, I remember the days... (Score:2)
I hear your pain (Score:2)
I hear your pain. When I fly home, I usually carry a phone, MP3 player, 2 laptops, bulky headphones, and 2 big hardcover books. Normally, I'd throw most of the gear in my checked baggage; but I don't trust the baggage handlers at all.
Our only recourse is to learn to travel light. (Granted, I could always switch employers to one who allows me to VNC directly into my desktop using personal hardware.)
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