I do a lot of multi day river raft trips and it would be phenomenal to take a Plus on a trip into Idaho's Wild & Scenic River Wilderness for example. Short of buying a ton of batteries, does anyone know if you can possibly charge these batteries with solar or some other kind of battery packs? Any feedback would be awesome! Thanks
Wilderness Charging??
- Thread starter Jamie Coulter
- Start date
I've charged my Phantom batteries off a "portable" 12v battery that I have with an inverter (used for photographic lighting),. but it's a brick.
Your best bet is buying additional batteries (and re-selling them after the trip perhaps).
a solar charger might work, but I can only imagine how long it would take (and how much it would cost)
at my local RC airport, a lot of guys bring portable gas powered generators, tho those are a bit big.
Your best bet is buying additional batteries (and re-selling them after the trip perhaps).
a solar charger might work, but I can only imagine how long it would take (and how much it would cost)
at my local RC airport, a lot of guys bring portable gas powered generators, tho those are a bit big.
Here's my take on it after I looked into this a bit for myself. I'm no expert, just another guy that wants to take his Phantom everywhere.
When researching, I found that something like the Goal Zero Yeti 150 will only carry enough juice to fully recharge two Phantom batteries assuming you don't use it for anything else. Going up from there the Yeti 400 will do six to seven charges and the Yeti 1250 (100lb. monster battery) will do twenty Phantom recharges.
You can recharge the any of the above with solar panels, but even the small Yeti 150 battery takes 11-22 hours to charge with Goal Zero's largest panels (Boulder 30). All of them can be charged in short order via wall socket at home prior to departure.
By my estimation it's only borderline practical and would depend heavily on what you want accomplish and how much you can carry. If you're going to be camped in a single location for a week or more, I think that having a GZ Yeti battery and a panel or two would keep you in the air. With good sun exposure you could effectively charge one battery per day but at that rate, you'd want to have two or three batteries with you just so you'll have at least one at the ready at all times.
For short trips, or for activities like rafting or wilderness backpacking where you won't have reliable dawn-to-dusk sun exposure on your panels, you'd be better served packing extra Phantom batteries. Or at least that's the conclusion I came to.
When researching, I found that something like the Goal Zero Yeti 150 will only carry enough juice to fully recharge two Phantom batteries assuming you don't use it for anything else. Going up from there the Yeti 400 will do six to seven charges and the Yeti 1250 (100lb. monster battery) will do twenty Phantom recharges.
You can recharge the any of the above with solar panels, but even the small Yeti 150 battery takes 11-22 hours to charge with Goal Zero's largest panels (Boulder 30). All of them can be charged in short order via wall socket at home prior to departure.
By my estimation it's only borderline practical and would depend heavily on what you want accomplish and how much you can carry. If you're going to be camped in a single location for a week or more, I think that having a GZ Yeti battery and a panel or two would keep you in the air. With good sun exposure you could effectively charge one battery per day but at that rate, you'd want to have two or three batteries with you just so you'll have at least one at the ready at all times.
For short trips, or for activities like rafting or wilderness backpacking where you won't have reliable dawn-to-dusk sun exposure on your panels, you'd be better served packing extra Phantom batteries. Or at least that's the conclusion I came to.
Jamie Coulter said:
I use one of these
https://www.amazon.com/RAVPower-Lightning-Thunderbolt-Incredible-connectors/dp/B00EHEEFWY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398762671&sr=8-1&keywords=RAVPower+14000mAh+External+Battery+Pack
with the twin outputs it can drive my range extender and my nexus 7 tablet, works for me
My field charging setup looks like this:
I've used it for a bit now, I only have 1 battery, but got more coming. It takes around 40 minutes to charge my battery at 5A from 15%.
But like Gizmo3000 said, the 12v battery is a brick, it weighs around 20kgs, so it would have to be transportable to your camp in a car or something.
I should get 7-8 charges of that battery's 75AH (they recommend not going below 50%) and I have a parallel board so I can charge 3 DJI batteries at a time, and a 20A charger so I can charge each with 5A.
I've used it for a bit now, I only have 1 battery, but got more coming. It takes around 40 minutes to charge my battery at 5A from 15%.
But like Gizmo3000 said, the 12v battery is a brick, it weighs around 20kgs, so it would have to be transportable to your camp in a car or something.
I should get 7-8 charges of that battery's 75AH (they recommend not going below 50%) and I have a parallel board so I can charge 3 DJI batteries at a time, and a 20A charger so I can charge each with 5A.
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