I was sent this solar powered USB power bank by someone who had been disappointed by its seemingly poor capacity. It turns out that was the least of the problems, with a big solder blob shorting one of the socket housings to the lithium cells positive terminal, resulting in a dead short when anything with the shell connected to negative was plugged in. (screened plug shells are common)
Fortunately there was protection on the negative rail, otherwise the simple act of plugging in a load could have caused the internal lithium cell to fail completely due to the high current flow.
These units are not in the least bit waterproof as some of the listings imply.
Fortunately there was protection on the negative rail, otherwise the simple act of plugging in a load could have caused the internal lithium cell to fail completely due to the high current flow.
These units are not in the least bit waterproof as some of the listings imply.
Use isopropyl alcohol to remove the battery it loosens the adhesive and makes it a little easier to remove
clives favorite type of pie? flaming lithium iron phosphate flavored
had to share that thought
I had similiar type some time ago – but funny enough, it worked flawlessly and it even charged to 4/5 via the solar panel. But it needed to be on the sun nearly whole day.
Still, not bad at all.
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I had one of those things. Worked OK for a year or so but then in the matter of a few days it became very pregnant. I handed it into the recycling centre before the alien popped out!
2 days to charge (or 2 weeks in the UK) and 2 seconds to discharge! I do like the built in self destruct mechanism.
I have a similar solar charger with a LED array opposite the solar panel. It too had bad electrical joints and a wire short.
Thnx for showing how to open this el-cheapo bestia.
I had one of those. It held about 4000wh, still not 5000wh.
The solar panel took two weeks for a complete self charging on my dashboard. I just let it there, always in the heat wich was probably not smart. I used it a bunch of times and it did it's job, not very fast yet not slowly either. I had it for a year and gave it a colleague.
The panel likely outputs around 150mA, common of that size, it would still take ages to charge just a mere 3000mAh battery however, over 20 hours.
This is why these items are gimmicks in my opinion.
A much better item would be a small foldable panel that looks like a tiny aluminium suitcase, let's say unfolded it might be 30cmx20cm, and it's 15cmx20cm folded up. Made with the same quality cells as commercial roof panels, you could expect this mini foldable one to be around a 10w panel. This panel would have 2 outputs, a 12v type one, and a 5v type one for USB devices.
The idea would be that you could plug it into any power bank or mobile phone, essentially anything that charges from USB, and charge the items up easily and quickly. Plus you could rest the charging item in the shade behind it or behind a tree or something, while the panel itself is in the sun, to basically reduce sun damage and heat on your power bank or mobile phone. And at least with this setup you could not only charge at full rate, but you could likely charge 2 items at the same time at full rate in fact.
These items like in the video however are crap gimmicks, the only useful thing in the power bank is the battery, the solar panel itself is a glorified solar garden panel in it's pathetic power. A person may as well take the battery out and solder it up to a proper charging circuit if they made the mistake of buying one of these, and of course the panel itself could only be used for a solar garden light project, trying to charge any serious powered battery from such a panel is a fools errand.