Emergency Solar Charger

Obviously if you're watching this video, you're using an electronic device. Chances are you're using a mobile electronic device. One that you can move around with you, whether it's a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone. More and more people are using those devices out at the range, and of course more and more we rely on them every day. And not just for emergency survival situations, but also for that long day at the range or maybe just for that occasional camping trip, something like a convenient solar powered charger is something that you should think about having. Now, obviously this makes a great emergency power solution. If you were to be out in the wilderness, if you were to be trapped, if you were to be stranded, you wanted to make sure your cell phone was charged. Obviously you can't be too far in the wilderness if you're using the cell phone, but there are plenty of times where you are away from civilization, just out at the range all day, where you still have cell service and you aren't able to plug your phone in. Now, if you're like me, you're probably carrying multiple devices, right? I've got my business phone, I've got the social media phone, I've got tablets, I've got a laptop, I've got cameras, I've got all kinds of things that I carry around with me in the Personal Defense Network tour truck as I'm running around. And then all day at the range is usually way too long for all of those things to hold a charge. And without using the backup battery system inside of the truck or without having to run the truck out on the range, this solar charging panel, which obviously stores very conveniently, it's this briefcase design that folds up. It's got two stands that fold out of the side and allow me to actually keep my stuff charged, even while I'm using it out at the range. I'll let you see here on camera just a quick this is to set up. We can adjust the angle so that it's pretty shallow. I'm in the southern United States, I'm at my home range here in St. Augustine, Florida. So we want a pretty shallow angle so that we're pointing up towards the sun. It's an intermittently cloudy day today. Now, this can be used to charge your car battery, this can be used to charge any kind of battery that you might have. You've got leads that come with a device like this that you can clip right on, alligator clips. I'm using a 12 volt DC type connector, just like I would use for a cigarette lighter in a car. And you can see the little blue light here, there's a little blue light there. You can see, I can go from 12 to 24 volt systems if I am charging a battery. And I'm gonna plug in both devices now. I'm gonna plug in, let's see, we'll plug this tablet in. It's currently at 68% charge. We're gonna put that under there. I'm gonna plug my business phone in here, it's at 29% charge, and I'm gonna leave those in the shade. One of the things we worry about with these types of devices obviously is overheating. We think about leaving them out in the sun, you may have had your tablet or your computer tell you it was too hot to be used. So I kind of like the fact that I can stick it underneath of this and have it in the shade. And as this next cloud goes away and the sun comes out and hits this panel, these were already charging. You can see, this doesn't have to be, most of your modern solar charging panels, it doesn't have to be a bright sunny day to be able to get some juice out of them. Now, the more sun you have, the more efficient they're gonna be. We're gonna leave this set up here for about 30 minutes. We'll come back and check it, and we'll check it again after an hour. I remember we were at 68% on the tablet and 29% on the smartphone. All right, it's been a little bit more than 30 minutes since we last looked at these, and we're now up to 42% on the Blackberry, and on the tablet we are at, where are we at? 79%. So what we saw was that not a huge increase, but we are increasing. Now, the sun has been out a little bit more in the second 1/2 hour than it was in the first 1/2 hour. Now, if you think about something like a terrorist event, the grid's down, the kinds of things that we think about survivalist or prepping for, worst case scenario stuff. If you're the only one with a cellphone, it's really not gonna matter much. If you're the only one with a tablet, as far as getting on the internet, it may or may not matter, but maybe you have other things that you use your smartphone or your tablet for other than just communication, right? Maybe you've got things like medical information stored on there. Maybe some maps are stored on there. You're still gonna wanna be able to power those things. The other thing you have to remember is that smartphones and tablets aren't the only reason to have a solar charger. You might be charging your illumination devices, your flashlights that you're gonna be running at night. You might be looking at a short wave radio, AM radio, something like that that's picking up broadcasts, or a ham radio if you're a ham radio operator. And again, you may be charging your battery on your vehicle because you're using your vehicle to power other things. During the day, you can charge up that battery, and then at night, you're using that vehicle to power some things off of the 12 volt system. So there's a lot of reasons to think about having a good, compact, solid solar charger system that you can take with you, that you can have ready in an emergency, one that you can travel with if you're into camping or over land adventure driving or something like that. These are super convenient, I'm glad that I've added one to the Personal Defense Network training tour truck. And you can see they're very easy and simple to use, and they're durable, easy to carry around. Solar energy has come a long way in the last few years, and it's something that you should be taking care of for yourself if you're thinking about being prepared, being safe and being able to take care of your family.