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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

#71

Post by SoftTalker »

JohnFen wrote: post #55
heelix wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not a backpacker, but I presume there is stuff you normally don't use, but don't want to be without. Some amount of first-aid supplies, etc.

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

#72

Post by rcxdude »

esperent wrote: post #58
thegrim33 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not necessarily, no. If you have multiple batteries in series for a higher voltage pack, then it'll be less for the same amount of energy stored. But then the marketing for these packs will happily abuse the units to get the biggest numbers.

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

#73

Post by grues-dinner »

phito wrote: post #34
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.

Also I doubt that Haribo has special light battery technology. Seems more likely that they lied on the capacity... Article doesn't test the capacity

If a video game company can fund building a fusion reactor, maybe a stealth breakthrough in energy densities coming from a sweet company is just how things roll these days!

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

#74

Post by catlikesshrimp »

Timshel wrote: post #37
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.

Capacity appears to be inline with others: https://old.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...

The author of tfa refers to r/ultralight, but fails to note the capacity reported there. Then he writes (or generates) an "article" that might be advertisement, making emphasis on price and fleetingly mentioning the brand products. It doesn't feel sincere.

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

#76

Post by SamBam »

mikestew wrote: post #59
thegrim33 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...by that logic if my 100W bulb is running on 10V, with my same 20Ah I'll get 200Wh, so I'll get a bulb of the same wattage, with the same battery, running twice as long? Magical double energy!

...this is why we should measure the total energy in Wh, not Ah.

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

#77

Post by rconti »

JohnFen wrote: post #55
heelix wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even on run of the mill international vacations, my wife and I always casually debrief on what we brought too much of, what we didn't use, etc. Traveling light is nice, even when you're not backpacking.

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

#78

Post by lightedman »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #10
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.

Ounces equal pounds and pounds equal pain.

Pain equals gain.

Most ultralight hikers optimize for low weight, I optimize for low weight and maximum leftover space to haul a ton of weight back.

https://imgur.com/a/ezPqNG1

Cuz trust me, you don't wanna leave that behind when you find it.

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

#79

Post by Teknoman117 »

bawolff wrote: post #75

I thought the point of back country hiking was to get away from technology and society. Weight is of course a major consideration, but its not the primary reason im not bringing batteries on a hiking trip.

As someone who does backpacking, a few reasons for bringing power sources:

- A satellite communication device. You don't use them for internet access, but it does allow me to send my location and a small message so I can let an emergency contact know where I've made camp for the night (and a lack of a message means I'm in trouble). It also enables me to contact search and rescue if I know I'm in trouble.

We did have to use it once when my sister lost her footing and fell of the side of a mountain and shattered her leg. (full recovery, thankfully)

- GPS receiver. I've shifted to using my phone as my GPS unit (with Gaia GPS). Trail GPS units have been subjected to planned obsolescence in a bad way, many will only be supported for a few years now, after that you can't load maps into them anymore. Might as well use your phone and Gaia works offline. Although you do learn that modern cellphones really, really hate being offline for weeks on end and random things start breaking down.

The latter was super important this year. With the budget cuts to park services this year in the US, many of our back country trails are in worse disrepair than they usually are. There were multiple days where the only way I knew I was still on the trail was to follow the dot on my GPS and look for the occasional cut log...

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

#80

Post by exabrial »

> Ultralight culture seems a little nuts to the uninitiated.

I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.

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