Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Interesting Things Can I Power With an External USB Battery?
New submitter expert464 writes: I just purchased an external USB battery for the main purpose of charging smartphones. I've also thought of using it to power a USB lamp and charge a bluetooth speaker. What other things am I missing that would be useful and/or interesting to power when not near an electrical outlet?
Have a question for Slashdot's readers? Take a look at other recent questions first to see if someone else has had a similar question. And if not, ask away! The more details and context you include, the more likely your question will be selected.
recharge your vape
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Low-power amateur radio is always fun, especially backpacking where portable power is nice.
I use mine to power my raspberry pi sometime
The Pi uses a microusb connector for power, so now you can make your tiny computer a portable one.
I use mine to power a digital picture frame so I could actually hang it or place some place that having a cord to it would look bad.
...there are USB powered vibrators.
He bought something he doesn't know what ELSE to do with. But fine, be a jackass.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
You could look into LED decoration. For example, BlinkyTape - a LED strip with an attached Arduino-compatible controller.
It can be just decoration, or you can use it for light painting.
Of course, you can build your own LED-based contraption.
mostly.
See above
A vagal nerve stimulator.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A dildo for your butt.
He bought something he doesn't know what ELSE to do with. But fine, be a jackass.
I've seen some idiotic "Ask Slashdot" stories, but this one probably takes the cake. To use the ever-popular car analogy, it's like asking "I just realized my car has a 12 volt electrical receptacle in the dashboard, what sort of things can I plug in?"
Yet another "Ask Slashdot" that can easily be solved by Google.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
http://www.amazon.com/Carejoy-...
I bought one specifically for recharging my Estes ProtoX micro quadcopter. http://www.amazon.com/Estes-Pr...
Apparently there just wasn't anything interesting or important to talk about today.
Oh, wait...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Well, with the magic of Google I've got:
A one can fridge:
http://www.kleargear.com/usb-refrigerator-desktop-12131.html
Something that looks like the Borg got you:
http://www.kleargear.com/usb-head-massage-12527.html
This I really like for the voltage detection:
http://www.craftsman.com/shc/s/p_10155_12602_00919337000P?sid=IDxCMDFx20140801x001&KPID=00919337000&kpid=00919337000
And this is along the same lines:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O13K9JY?tag=price106300d-20&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I did. I don't have a phone charging problem, because I have both portable solar panels (including a 10W flexi built into a bag) and a car which puts out lots of ~12V, but I still bought a USB charger. I broke open some LiIon laptop packs and didn't know what to do with all the cells, so I bought a $6 eBay power bank and loaded it up. Now I'm trying to imagine stuff to do with it. Wasn't my question, though. I think my R-Pi might go mobile, but then I need a boost converter to run the display I have in mind.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I dunno, maybe you could power things that need external batteries?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I use one to provide reliable power to one always-on Raspberry Pi2. Had to test a selection of chargers, and not all work for pass-thru (often undervolt).
Why do you even bother replying to questions like this. You need a hobby.
The CX-10 nano quadcopter can be charged from one of those. The whole kit is small enough to fit in your pocket, which is pretty cool.
Why do you even bother replying to questions like this. You need a hobby.
If his hobby is "pissing people like you off," then he's doing well.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I've been looking into this myself since hurricane season is coming up. It's not easy to find this stuff, because a search that includes USB finds a lot of things.
On Amazon, I have found flashlights, lanterns, weather radios, and FRS radios. Sometimes you have to read the detailed description of the item to find that it can be charged from usb..
Frank
Handy if windy
it didn't kill homer.
http://www.toonzone.net/forums...
lose != loose
OK, I've taken the cake.
What can I do with it, apart from either having it or eating it?
Hey everyone, I just bought a bottle that I can attach to my bike so I can drink water while I'm riding my bike. What other drinkable liquids can I put in it?
Also I just bought some AAA batteries for my TV remote. What else can I put them in?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
An Ice Shaver. Snow Cones while camping for the win.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
You'd think Dice would have learned about the damned Streisand Effect from all the stories here on Slashdot. All it would have taken is a single line: "Disclaimer: Sourceforge is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dice Holdings, Inc." in the summary. Major news media outlets do this *all the time* when reporting on (either positive or negative news) their sister organizations owned by the same umbrella corporation.
The topic would have been done, discussed, and on it's way to being forgotten by now. Instead, you simply get a slow burn of news and a bunch of people irritated at your obvious and ham-handed suppression of a story.
Note: Sorry for the offtopic. Consider it a small act of "civil disobedience."
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
N/t
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
You could always use your battery to power a PirateBox ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
I'm using one to power an Arduino project. All the parts you need for a battery supply are there, charger, voltage converter, battery cell, connectors. You can't make one for the price of one you can buy.
A Raspberry Pi powered, sound-sensitive disco suit: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/yd1... Code: https://github.com/chrisgagne/...
One of my inverter / chargers (Kisea Asbo) has a USB charging port on it. I have a battery pack plugged into so if we have a prolonged power outage, I can directly charge the cell phones / flashlights / whatever else. USB charging is so ubiquitous these days I think it will eventually replace the AA cell.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Here's a high quality vibrating dildo that charges over USB:
https://www.funfactory.com/en/...
It has a unique form of vibration, which no other brand currently does. (That's why it's so expensive)
I use this, for the pi:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
get a 12v SLA battery (as you'd find in a computer UPS box) and that sits on one set of leads. your 14-18v filtered dc goes into thee main non-battery input, and you get one 'logic OR' output.
now, its either the battery voltage (12) or the input module voltage (could be 18v). so, I then pass that ups module output into a dc/dc to bring it down to a clean and reliable 5v for the pi:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
this ensures you always always get 5v into the pi, even if you lose mains power. it can all be built into a single box, too, even the 12v battery.
just fyi. (I built all this and its been working well for months, so far)
https://farm9.staticflickr.com...
HTH
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Then use one to charge the other!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I tried to do a sit in but I broke my monitor.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Anything that takes power by USB, even a Raspberry Pi.
From a more practical standpoint, handheld game consoles. I regularly power my 3DS XL from a USB battery pack (you can buy USB to 3DS cables), and I believe the Vita uses USB natively.
Of course, it was on sale!
Just because I don't have an occasion to use it now, doesn't mean such an occasion won't come up.
It matches my bag.
But isn't it just too cute?
Well, your phone, your tablet, your GPS, your portable speakers, your music player. You know, anything you own which can be charged via USB.
I've got 2x5000 mAh, and 2x6000 mAh batteries I keep charged around the house and when I travel. They all have 1A and 2.1A outputs, as well as built in LED flashlights. Which means I can keep most of my stuff charged until I get where I'm going. Or I can charge them where I'm sitting instead of being chained to a wall charger. (And I've got a 4-port USB wall charger as well as a 3-port USB wall charger which will do 120/240V 50/60Hz.)
They've handy and convenient, but do you actually need to ask "what things that charge from USB can I charge from USB"?
If it charges from USB, and you own it ... ta da!
Years ago I decided that except for very specific things (like my camera), I won't own anything which doesn't charge with standard USB. From there, a couple of cables, a couple of batteries, and a couple of wall chargers and you can keep stuff always charged.
Once you toss proprietary cables, or anything which can't charge by USB ... you find it's a lot easier to pack what you need.
My travel electronics bag is now capable of operating everything I need from any electrical source by reusing the same USB cables. It really cuts down on the crap and clutter.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Creative people can find great uses for those. A local store had them on sale for $2.50 each. I bought a few. A couple of immediate uses are;
A super cheap UPS for a super cheap computer, the Raspberry Pi. Put it inline with the power supply. Glitches in power don't crash the Pi. For a power outage the 2AH battery feeding the Pi provides about 6 hrs of run time. No media server crashes.
Portable power for a Wireless router. Take a router with you for tethering and range extension. The lighter socket in the car goes off with the key, but a 5V router can provide some run time for mobile road warriors.
Solar Charger. Keep one charged in the window with a small solar panel for brighter longer lasting solar night lights.
Boot power for your external laptop DVD drive. Let's face it. You may have lost or broken the Siamese USB cable for your drive and a single USB port on the laptop won't provide the 1.5A mps the drive requires. Some battery packs have data lines connected so one in series will power that pesky drive that won't run on a single laptop port. May have to test on a case by case basis for this to work.
Same as above for a LED flatbed scanner. Some don't run right on a laptop. If you scan and fax legal documents and contracts on the road, this is great.
Power a powered USB hub while on the road. Using a wireless keyboard, mouse, scanner, credit card reader? Out of USB ports? Solves many road warrior problems.
Anyone who can't think of a few good uses for one of these has no need to waste money to buy one.
Despite all the trolls, I'm really glad you asked this question. I've been looking for a good reason to buy one for a while. I'm far from power long enough for anything to really die, but the popularity and accessibility of this has been growing lately. Powering a Pi is the genius/obvious idea that I hadn't stumbled on yet... and I think it's the reason I've been looking for. So screw you trolls, and thank you asker.
You'll probably get better update by posting the story to Soylent News or Pipedot.
If his hobby is "pissing people like you off," then he's doing well.
No, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
What the hell, who modded this as "Troll"? Your point is on target, /u/war4peace.
I think the best use for this would be to power a USB Pet Rock.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Put down that twinkie!
Requiem for the American Dream
I had to do sound at an outdoor event with limited power so I brought my Earforce X11 headphones and they require USB power amplification to play anything at all at any volume level. So I brought my lithium polymer, solar powered, 4000+ mAH battery pack that weighs like 1 oz to power it the whole time. They're about $23 on ebay from Opteka by the way and they're one of the hottest items sold in my computer repair shop. They do take 16 hours to recharge using just sunlight though.
I bought a battery. Can anyone think of any uses for a battery?
So you can use them at night...
I have a rechargeable battery bank, a bank that uses 4xAA drycells, and a few 12v-powered usb sources. The drycell one stays in my globebox with some AAs, as it can be "recharged" on short notice with a trip to any store. The rechargeable one is in my center console, to be grabbed if I need to recharge my phone. That one also has a simple little bright white LED light on it and makes a nice impromptu flashlight. (IMHO every battery bank should have this feature, look for it if you are shopping around, it also has a charge level indicator and can be switched off without unplugging the device, but alas only one USB port)
On the floor is one 7 port power station, that can supply two 2amp and 5 1amp ports off the truck's 12v power, good for rapid-charging high-demand things like tablets or other banks. Its daily duty is to power my GPS, a pair of USB speakers on my dash, and keep my iphone charged. Most of the "high power usb chargers" are garbage and a waste of money. This one's actually designed for it and speced to do the job. (http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Hubs/7-Port-Dedicated-USB-Charging-Station~ST7CU35122)
I know several people that have those cheap usb-personal-fans and use a bank to run them, they keep them in their purse and pull them out when they're somewhere hot and want to cool off.
I'm also ordering two DC-DC converters shortly, one that steps down and one that steps up. It occurs to me that I can use the step-up to generate 12v etc from a 5v USB source, which may come in handy.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
My kids are constantly stealing mine to plug into the gaming controllers. Admittedly, that's a pretty good use for one.
runs for over three hours
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
maybe this is the same guy who makes $210k/yr and is living paycheque to paycheque?
I kinda miss the systemd guy.... sniff!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
http://www.amazon.com/A-Boy-Ba...
You can do what used to be a simple project for an 8-year-old, take it to a "makerfaire" or some other such nonsense, and be hailed a modern genius among the nitwits thus gathered!
This is consumerism at its top: first buy, second look for an usage.
I have a USB heated coffee mug that is also a mass storage device. I used a portable charger to keep the mug's contents warm when I went outside last year.
This year I'll just use my Android smartphone's USB3 bidirectional charging feature. If it wasn't for meteor showers, I wouldn't have any need to go outside (or shower for that matter).
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that it was possible to have a conversation with Google.
...which I assumed was to hear about creative ideas, I've used my pack as an impromptu handwarmer during winter when I forgot my gloves, and it was colder than I expected.
I use a battery eliminator with my GoPro Hero 3+ Black, together with an external (11500 mAh) battery pack. The combo will power the GoPro for far longer than the (maximum supported) 64GB microSD card has video capacity. Perfect for long cross-country flights that exceed the ~1.5-2 hours of internal battery capacity (the internal battery is 1150-1200 mAh, so the 11500 mAh external is good for about 18 hours of video recording; a 64GB microSD card can hold about 7 hours of video).
geek. lawyer.
Portable power for a Wireless router. Take a router with you for tethering and range extension. The lighter socket in the car goes off with the key, but a 5V router can provide some run time for mobile road warriors.
My portable wireless router has a built in 6 Ah battery that can be used to charge other devices.
And the lighters/aux power in my car don't turn off til you open the door after you turn the key to off.
Kinda like a hooker...
If your car won't start, you could use a bi-directional cigarette USB adapter to jump start your car.
>Note: Sorry for the offtopic. Consider it a small act of "civil disobedience
It's not off-topic. It's your answer to who would you vote to try a DIY USB-battery-powered taser on.
"Hello, Mrs. Gorilla."
"Hello, Mrs. Non-Gorilla."
"You been shopping?"
"No... I've been shopping."
"Whaddya buy then?"
"A piston engine."
"Whaddya but THAT for?"
"Ooh... It was a bargain!"
I use the 12v output from my Anker Astro Pro2 portable charger to power a Terasic Cyclone V GX FPGA development kit while I'm on train journeys. I do occasionally get funny looks from the train conductor. I haven't tried this on an aeroplane yet.
I bought the Anker Pro2 specifically because it has a 12v output in addition to the usual 5v USB port. Very handy.
Anyway, these battery packs are perfect for powering Arduinos and other small development/hobby boards.
You're hyping Kleargear? WTF???
Google them if you're drawing a blank...
I was considering installing RaspPI into my car (12v) and this kind of scheme would work very well.
KlearGear is a terrible, horrible, no-good bunch of a$$holes. They used to have a clause in their customer agreement "allowing" them to bill customers $3,500 if they left a bad review. They billed some customers that wrote a nastygram on ripoffreport. When the customers (understandably) ignored the bogus bill (the bogus clause didn't even exist when the customers made their purchase), it was sent to collections and dutifully reported on the customer's credit report.
When the customers sued, KlearGear ignored the lawsuit, had a default judgement entered, and then tried to have the judgement vacated because the parent company is French and they argue they didn't receive proper service. (This is quite bogus because they most certainly have a substantial US presence, and can be served here.)
it's still just a question of what can he power with 2.1 amps of 5V.
(you need one that does 2.1 amps to charge an ipad..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And other people's cell phones. The solar charger in my laptop case is a bit heavy, but holds charges for approximately 4 modern cell phones and has proven invaluable at meetings when when other personnel's phones are running down.
I havent forsaken my calling, just been traveling with no comp!!!
I'm a big fan (pun fully intended) of having air circulating, and since I live in Hurricane Central, which also experiences frequent power black-outs from thunderstorms (Florida Plunder & Loot isn't the most efficient or reliable power company on this rock). I use my USB battery pack, to operate my USB-powered fan. I'd rather sit in the dark and be cool, than sit in the dark and sweat.
You can power a Sabrent wifi audio receiver (wf-radu) with a usb pack. all you need are headphones. Its my new wireless setup for mowing the lawn.
Good to know. I'll have to get my USB fridge someplace else. Google can probably help with that but it's a bummer KlearGear shows so high in search results...
Thx.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The 12" long thick black dick vibrating jackhammer dildo I use on your mom's rectum.
Yes, this will work but is a bit big. Just using a lipstick USB (18650 sized) is a very small, neat box.
...
Seriously? Ever heard of a thermos?
Ps3 controller
My MHL cable which connects my phone to a HDMI display needs a 5V USB power source. A power pack seems a good idea if your TV does not provide 5V USB output.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi...
Help with the California drought.
>Hey everyone, I just bought a bottle that I can attach to my bike so I can drink water while I'm riding my bike. What other drinkable liquids can I put in it?
I just saw a how to earn money without working ad after installing something from sourceforge. It's a system where you rent out your bike along with special shorts, targeting meth users. The shorts have a pee collection sleeve and drain tube that attaches to the drink bottle. Included in the kit are optional flavor packets. Add one to the bottle after each use and sell the drink to meth users. It's a powerful new energy drink that will keep them coming back for more.
Warning: Banning this product in your country can leave you liable for lost-profits damages.
Coning soon, TPP Wipes
Put a plug on one of the old and useless USB printer cables that we all have a million of, and use it to run your router and/or modem during a blackout.
Tie it to a solar panel to use as an emergency energy source in a blackout: Charge the battery during the day, charge the phone from the battery at night.
Power some crappy USB-operated speakers in when outside in the garden, as even crappy speakers are better than phone speakers and most of the inexpensive rechargable Bluetooth stuff is even worse.
Use it as a field supply for your next Arduino project.
etc.
Kid-proof tablet..