LIDL a EU based
food shop chain which sells discount
electrical items like
power drills supplies a interesting USB adaptor that fits onto the 20 volt 2 amp hour cordless drill
battery power packs .
https://www.ebay.ie/itm/123705678152...&ul_noapp=true
These
battery power packs are in this time a 20 volt 2ah power pack that comes with a suitable tool like cordless drill or compressors shears or similar cordless tools across the LIDL range called Parkside tools.
I bought a power pack and
charger without a drill or tool costing €30 ( ~$35 USA). Then I bought the USB adaptor cost about ~€6 ( ~$ 7
USA ) . The adaptor fits on top of the battery pack and has two USB slots and small LED light .
When you
work out the capacity it is over 2000 mha because 20 volts dropped down to 5 volts means the original 2 ah is multiplied by more than 2 .
I can now recharge or better umbilical cord run both my smart
phone and my tablet at the same when I go away from
boat for extended periods
Using a double adaptor USB it can probably do extra stuff like also a
camera run off a USB as well as long as total demand can't exceed the maximum demands of ~2 amps .
A fully charged tablet and smart
phone will only probably demand ~1 amp leaving another amp to spare . Needles to say a run down near zero charge in mobile phone and Tablet will be lot more demanding probably closer to ~3 amps demands so this might overload the drill packs ability to supply the demands but I suspect the Li Ion cells are rated to ~2C which means the
batteries can supply ~4 amps . However the
fuses and circuits might be limited to ~ 2amps within the drill packs casing.
Many restaurants that let you use thier
WiFi often don't have suitable power outlets to hook into to keep your phones cameras and tablets in top form in case your away from
boat for several days
Yes I know there exists various other flat pack purpose built Li Ion mobile power packs that do these jobs but I never had much luck with them . Often the recharger USB slot for them is a micro USB and these seem to break and ruin the packs ability to recharge easily
( Yes experts can
repair the packs but it isn't so easy to
repair the micro USB fitting) .
I know I got four of them all lasted only a few months and micro USB broke off . I intend to reporpose all these battery packs to make one extra large pack out of the four packs all 10,000 amp hour packs and make a 40,000 mha pack . You can never have enough battery power on a boat
The big advantage of the power drill 20 amp packs is they are very robust and use a 240 volt
charger unit that isn't a Micro USB slot to recharge with . Also importantly the recharge time is less than 1 hour as apposed to Typical mobile phone packs often more than 2 hours for 4000 mha packs and 8 hours for the 10,000 mha packs
Extra Power drill packs without charger cost €20 ~$ 25
Using my 300 Watt invertor it can drive the charger to recharge these packs .
RC model plane users can source 12 volt chargers
More adventurious
electrical minded folk can look to use many of these packs to drive their
electric engines on their tenders at interesting lower prices than
marine shops would charge for power packs
Be aware sourcing Li Ion cells from the
USA is very difficult as the telephone number fines and multi year jail time risks for Li Ion cell vendors exporting HAZMAT
Lithium makes it unlikely they will export the
batteries to the rest of the planet . Therefore finding
cheap Li Ion cells in the EU for low prices is hard .
Typical costs per loose cell in the EU is often north of ~€ 15
Cost of loose cells in the USA tend to be north of ~$5 a cell
Cells can be got from
China.
But claims of $1 with ~3500 MHa plus cells are most often SCAM sites
Prices vary the capacity size of the cells which vary from ~1500 mha to ~2800 mha
The LIDL drill 20 volt 2amp pack is most likely to be 2000 mha cells and 5of them in a 5S1P pack makes this ~€4 a cell
https://www.ebay.ie/itm/123705678152...&ul_noapp=true
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions