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Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

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Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#51

Post by binary132 »

Zanni wrote: post #2

Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank. I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker. I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.

I mean, maybe that makes sense if you carry 50+ pages of maps, but carrying a whole book of maps on a single expedition doesn’t.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#52

Post by Nexxxeh »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #29
nickthegreek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel comfortable in stating that they are not designed by Haribo, a candy company.

Well, yes, that was my thought. I mean my own employer had some company branded power banks that they gave out to employees. They're crap! But they were requested by the Sales team to hand out as swag at trade shows and whatnot, so they probably didn't put much more thought into it than "Find supplier that can create small power banks, slap company logo on them. Do it cheaply." I have to think the Haribo power banks…

Perhaps it was a rushed tradeshow/employee perk gone awry. Something like:

Tradeshow coming up very quickly, previous merch supplier has let the sales team down.

Mid-level Haribo employee responsible for merch finds a supplier willing to rush through everything, because let's face it, Haribo are probably going to pay their bills.

MoQ is 100 units, which is 1 lot.

Sales person intends to order 2000 units, better to be safe than sorry and run out. Accidentally orders 2000 lots of units with 100 units per lot. This isn't noticed until they're already printed and then it's, as they say in the legal profession, no takesie backsies.

Haribo suddenly have a lot more power banks than they have booth visitors, and employees combined.

Rather than store them indefinitely, they sell them off at cost and shift them quickly though Amazon. This drastically cuts down on warehousing space of small lithium (explosive) packs that the candy people have to store.

And kids and grown-ups love it so, with 20,000mAh wherever they go.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#53

Post by binary132 »

Ekaros wrote: post #24
JohnFen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're taking a shaving device of any sort on your backpacking trip, you've missed a core lesson of the ultra light dudes.

Wouldn't it be logical that ultra light people have no body hair left? And want to keep it so? After all that is lot of grams...

just think of all the excess weight of dead skin cells covering your body!

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#54

Post by binary132 »

dylan604 wrote: post #31
jdblair wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 oz =~ 28 grams is a really useful conversion to remember (signed, an American living in Europe)

28.4 grams. The rounding adds up quickly, and there’s comments here about people trimming borders off of paper maps. That .4 matters. Also, 16oz to 1lb. Also matters when your buying things for recreational purposes. Especially when only buying points.

Grams are ounces. Ounces are pounds. Milligrams are grams. Micrograms are milligrams. Picograms are micrograms.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#55

Post by JohnFen »

heelix wrote: post #32
Zanni wrote: post #2

Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank. I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker. I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.

The trick to lighter packs for many was weighing everything. Not uncommon to break everything down by grams - which tells you what could be improved. No point in spending $50 on a .5oz spoon, if your pack is coming in at 4lbs. Does help optimize where things could be cut and where the faf is. Lets you focus on what you really want to bring in when you have a breakdown of everything you bring. I really like lighterpac…

> Very easy to bring crap you don't need as well.

This is so true it's not even funny. I keep a spreadsheet for each trip, and among other things, I record which of the items I actually used on the trips. It was very surprising to me how many things I thought I used and therefore needed, but when reviewing the records, I never (or very rarely) actually used.

Those items get cut from future loads.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#56

Post by JohnFen »

binary132 wrote: post #51
Zanni wrote: post #2

Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank. I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker. I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.

I mean, maybe that makes sense if you carry 50+ pages of maps, but carrying a whole book of maps on a single expedition doesn’t.

Paper is very heavy. Even if you just carry a single map, you could likely save much of an ounce by trimming the borders.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#57

Post by tzs »

slipperybeluga wrote: post #11
cenamus wrote: post #5

20Ah for 23 bucks? Seems like it's almost too good to be true. Wouldn't surprise me if it was just half that, would explain the price and weight.

The picture on Amazon says 10Ah. Not interested until there is independent verification. The Haribo licensing lends some legitimacy, but way too many fly by night companies selling a fraction of what they advertise.

There are two models, one listed at 10Ah and one at 20Ah:

https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-10000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...

https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-20000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#58

Post by esperent »

thegrim33 wrote: post #48
cenamus wrote: post #5

20Ah for 23 bucks? Seems like it's almost too good to be true. Wouldn't surprise me if it was just half that, would explain the price and weight.

Man it drives me crazy when people/products use Ah instead of Wh as a way to specify battery "capability". Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know. Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh…

Isn't that 20Ah figure always relative to the internal voltage of the lithium batteries, 3.7v? At least that's what I always assumed.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#59

Post by mikestew »

thegrim33 wrote: post #48
cenamus wrote: post #5

20Ah for 23 bucks? Seems like it's almost too good to be true. Wouldn't surprise me if it was just half that, would explain the price and weight.

Man it drives me crazy when people/products use Ah instead of Wh as a way to specify battery "capability". Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know. Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh…

If your 100W light bulb is a USB bulb running at 5V (to make the math a bit easier), with 20 Ah you’ll get 100Wh, ergo it’ll run your bulb for a hour. You just need to specify the voltage. There are numerous online calculators to do this math for you.

https://www.inchcalculator.com/ah-to-wh-calculator/

Watt-hours won’t save you, because we don’t know what voltage your bulb needs. Don’t assume it’s 120/240V.

Re: Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

#60

Post by jdblair »

dylan604 wrote: post #31
jdblair wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 oz =~ 28 grams is a really useful conversion to remember (signed, an American living in Europe)

28.4 grams. The rounding adds up quickly, and there’s comments here about people trimming borders off of paper maps. That .4 matters. Also, 16oz to 1lb. Also matters when your buying things for recreational purposes. Especially when only buying points.

the point of knowing the rough conversion is to be able to do head-math to get a close number. I use 30 a lot of the time, b/c most of the time a close estimate is all I need.

if you're cutting off the borders of your map, by all means, use a calculator

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