I have a digital camera (Panasonic DMC-LX3) that I’d like to take on an upcoming camping trip and I thought solar would be the best way to give it juice.
My research suggests that consumer solar chargers require special adapter tips or USB connectivity, neither of which will work for this camera. I’m unfamiliar with solar tech and electricity in general… are there any other options?
The only thing I can think of is getting a solar panel that outputs in 12v and hooking it up to a third-party car charger for this battery somehow. What kind of outlets do 12v solar chargers typically use? Would I have to splice any cables or get special adapters, and if so, would this be dangerous and/or electrically inefficient?
Or would a total newbie like me be able to DIY something from Radioshack to give it better charging performance?
If it matters, the batteries say they are 3.7v, 1100 mAh.
(I can’t speak to the quality of either, but they have the right plugs, and were the first I found on a quick google search for “12v solar charger” and “car charger panasonic dmc-lx3”.
The solar panel has an adapter with it for a cigarette lighter plug, and the battery charger has (among other included options) bare leads. Buy a female “cigarette lighter plug” from Radio Shack, and connect. Take a minute to check that the positive (+) and negative (-) connections are correct. Shouldn’t be hard, even for someone with no experience at all. 12v solar output isn’t dangerous in the least, even if the work is done in full sunlight.
I don’t know how long it’d take to charge though. It might just be easier to buy a few extra batteries, charge them up, and toss them in your pack.
Thanks, butler1850. Electrically, do all those connections and conversions affect the charging output in any significant manner? And mathematically, is it possible to calculate how long it’d take to charge a battery given 8 hours / day of sunlight?
It’s going to be a 5-month trip. I won’t have access to a car and after 5 months, even initially fully-charged batteries would’ve lost a lot of their charge.
ETA: postcards, yeah, I like it a lot! One of the few “prosumer” wide-angle compact cams out there. The noise correction is a bit annoying, but a worthwhile tradeoff for everything else the baby does. I sold my SLR setup for this and haven’t regretted it yet.
Oi, I can’t believe I left out my original (and most important) question: Are there consumer-grade solar panels that output power through regular electrical sockets (so I can plug any AC adapter in)?
No. Any panel will be outputting 12VDC, while the AC adapter wants 90-230 VAC.
I doubt the linked panel above will do the job. At 2W, it’s only about 160mA which I doubt is enough to operate the 12V charger. And every time a cloud comes past will drop the output.
It depends on how you’re getting to the campsite as whether there is a viable solution. I only way I can think of requires a bigger panel of say 5W, and a small gelcell battery, say 7A/hr. Panel charges battery at a low rate over a few days and once or twice a week you use the gelcell to charge the camera taking it’s usual 90 minutes or so.
This setup will allow other small devices to be charged. If they only have mains chargers, a very small inverter could be used to provide mains voltage at very low current which could allow an electric razor to be run or charged for example. It could manage to recharge a laptop I think but for better efficiency I’d use a DC/DC converter for that. But that would flatten the gelcell and it’d take at least 25 hours of sunshine to recharge it. You could use the gelcell to power some LEDs for the tent/cabin if you made up a wiring harness before you left (or use rechargeable AAs etc to power the LEDs and a 12V recharger off the gelcell to recharge the AAs).
But the above set up is bulky and weighs a fair bit. If you’re being transported in, it wouldn’t matter, and you could go with a bigger panel and/or gelcell.
Whatever you do, test run it a home for a couple of weeks, make sure there’s fuses in all the output leads, take lots of spare fuses, and a small multimeter.
dynamitedave makes a good point about charging capacity (current). It will take a while (for that particular unit) to charge fully. I didn’t realize that your trip was that long. If you’re going to be using the batteries fairly quickly, you’ll certainly need a much bigger solar panel. If you are working from a “base camp”, and can leave this in the sun whenever the weather allows, and have a few batteries, (one in the camera, one charging, probably one in reserve), you might be ok.
You could go with a 20W Panel for not a lot more, though you’d still need to get the female cigarette plug.
