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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

#81

Post by auxym »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #79
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…

Rechargeable headlamp is another one.

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

#82

Post by addaon »

syedkarim wrote: post #69
cenamus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but pretty much every power bank uses lithium ion batteries (or used to, at least), so you use 3.7 average volts.

Lithium NMC, which I think is the most common, is 3.7V. Lithium iron phosphate, which some power packs do use, has a nominal voltage of 3.2V.

And LTO, which is what I actually want, is 2.3 - 2.4 V.

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

#83

Post by int_19h »

JohnFen wrote: post #56
binary132 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then there are things such as maps printed on silk...

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

#84

Post by addaon »

JohnFen wrote: post #9
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.

That insane over-optimization is how folks are getting down to (and below) 10 pounds. I'm not even remotely an ultralight backpacker, but I do count ounces (no matter what your weight limit is, you can't escape making tradeoffs to stay within it). Your hiking load is a great example of how quickly apparently insignificant quantities can add up. Saving fractions of an ounce multiple times gets you large savings far mo…

I'm down to around 10 lb base load. And then I hike in the desert where I carry 5 - 7 liters of water (11 - 15 lbs). And food. Saving a pound here and there is totally worth it, but there's a large part of the country where prudent hiking means the majority of your weight is water.

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

#85

Post by int_19h »

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.

There's a point past which it becomes a number game without any practical utility. But there's a lot of people (especially hereabouts!) that find this kind of thing very enticing. Think of min-maxing D&D builds... it's kind of like that, but your rulebook is basically physics.

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

#86

Post by int_19h »

NoiseBert69 wrote: post #4

You can learn a lot from the ultra light dudes. I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters. Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.

The trick is to make sure to get a power bank that can do all kinds of voltage. 12V is especially useful for obvious reasons.

(Coincidentally, the Nitecore power bank briefly discussed in the article supports that.)

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

#87

Post by int_19h »

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 with most other activities, the point varies for different people. For some, it's a way to test their preparedness against the elements. And for some of those, the game is to do that in as small and light a package as possible.

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

#88

Post by int_19h »

madaxe_again wrote: post #13

This is great and all, but for me it feels like much more of an achievement when I reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear and child on my back - and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting it all down and feeling like you might just float away. Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.

I mean, if you find it easy enough to reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear, then surely there's another more difficult summit that would be just as much of an achievement without?

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

#90

Post by TacticalCoder »

happytoexplain wrote: post #19
codedokode wrote: post #15

Sorry for being off-topic, but why with all the advanced technology today I have to manually copy ounces and pounds into Google to learn how much it is? Instead of adding dark themes and material design, it would be better to add a unit converter. Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.

Under normal usage, even in airplane mode, some phones last only 12-48 hours after just three to five years.

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