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Traveling with Too Many Chargers?
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?"
I use Igo and USB cables to charge my devices. Igo junk is available at a lot of retailers. There are varying power source and wattage ratings of the chargers, including air/car/110~/220~ power supplies that automatically adjust voltage and current, and can charge four or more devices at once if necessary. It is based on tip adapters that deliver power specific to their respective devices. They are pretty fast to make new connectors.
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.
FairTax baby!
I don't think you are travelling with too many chargers - but that you are traveling with too many things that require chargers.
i think your best option is to use devices that charge via usb as much as possible. my phone uses usb to charge and i thought ipods did as well (don't have one though.) I know there are cameras that use usb to replenish their batteries. incompatible chargers is an enourmously frustrating experience so i am happy to see that more devices seem to be focusing on using usb. i know that radio shack sells kits with different adapter sizes and voltage switching as i used one to charge my minidisc player a few years back. this is not as good of a solution to me as usb charging so i look for that in devices i want to purchase. i realize differnt devices have dfferent amperage requirements but why, oh why, must cell phone manufacturers make so many different interfaces and amperage settings for what is essentially the same device! can they possibly be making that much money ripping people off for chargers? anyway, demand usb charging and hopefully more manufaturers will get a clue.
harmonious design
One assumes you meant "eBay sellers pedal plenty of them."
Yours etc.,
Slashdot Martyr Brigades, Inappropriate Homophone Encouragement Division
My phone, mp3 player, gps, and camera all charge and interface using miniusb. Perhaps you should consider purchasing products a little less proprietary?
What are the limitations and caveats with 240 vs 120
Well they're pretty much the same. In both cases you've got about a 9% overvoltage condition.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If you haven't noticed, you've got the same problem at home too. I've got five computers and assorted battery chargers and cell phones and gadgets in my home office, and the fucking things have filled up 6 power strips. And I'm even using the 6 inch extension cords on all the bricks so I'm not wasting any spaces on the power strips. It's fucking out of control.
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Guess he is encouraging you to use an inappropriate homophone.
I used to sell these things at the electronics/computer store I worked at called (review) I-GO Juice. There were a few different models out at the time, but one had pretty much any proprietary plug I had ever come across (believe me I've seen some odd ones) as well as adapters for foreign outlets and car outlets. It also auto-sensed input and output voltages and wattages/amps. Neat little thing and my customers always came back to tell me it did everything they wanted anywhere they were, and it's not often you get that. Hope that helps, I'm sure there are other companies that make a similar product, but this is the only one I've seen. Cheers, Phil
Those phones are pretty gay.
... and then they built the supercollider.
A very, VERY, VERY standardized solution to your problem already exists... One that will work in any device from any country on the planet, regardless of local voltage, frequency, and even reliability of AC power availability:
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.
Unfortunately, my next Nokia phone couldn't use it, because it needed more amperage or some other undocumented quality. Now that I've got a cretinously stupid Motorola phone, I'll have to see if I can find the cable again.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
USB charging is great for leaving your blackberry in a cradle. But for on the go, it's not a good solution. For one thing - too slow. Plus it doesn't completely solve your carry one charger problem.
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 and just as expensive.
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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