479
Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature)
(www.spacebar.news)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
479 points (91.7% liked)
Android
27484 readers
155 users here now
DROID DOES
Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.
2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.
4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.
5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.
6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.
7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.
8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.
Community Resources:
We are Android girls*,
In our Lemmy.world.
The back is plastic,
It's fantastic.
*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.
Our Partner Communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I saw a YouTube video where someone was testing crank powered phone chargers and they weren't able to get enough juice to ever power the phones. Have you tested it for that purpose?
It charges a battery in the radio, and then that discharges while charging other devices. Now, you may be spending an unpleasantly-long amount of time cranking the thing, but that's another matter.
With respect, I'd like to double down on my question and ask if you personally have used it to charge your phone and how well it worked.
I haven't used it to charge the phone. I normally carry a number of other devices that provide charge, including a larger set of folding solar panels and another battery bank, in the car, and I've used that, but not this particular solar/crank charger.
I would be legitimately interested in a demonstratably good crank charger, but it seems like there's a million bad ones out there, that's why I ask.
When you see how little energy a Tour d'France cyclist can generate, with their legs, over a given period of time, it becomes clear why these crank things are useless.
You could possibly charge a phone with a cycling setup, I haven't done the math in a while. What I recall is the human body makes for a terrible generator.
Humans are efficient, and there are also huge losses in converting the energy from work to electricity, and then further converting this to whatever voltage you actually need, while also likely first charging a battery somewhere so you can use it at a different time than you are cranking/pedaling...
However humans are also strong and can think of mechanisms that help with leverage and whatnot; for example an elliptical machine would probably be better than a bike.
With that being said the power you can generate is still pretty small; around 100Wh is floating around. If you worked out more you'd make more, obviously, but that might not be feasible.
It'd still be more than enough for essentials like charging your phone though.
100w/hr, cycling constantly? How much food does that require?
It's just not realistic. As I mentioned, I'd read some math breaking down what a Tour d'France cyclist could do for a battery, and it was paltry.
Better off investing in solar at a rate of 5-10x your battery capacity. Then you can charge reasonably fast in most conditions.
Fair enough, good point.
Fair enough. I'm not too worried about it charging (though I am confident that it will be an enormous amount of work and possibly take multiple passes while leaving the cell phone off). For me, this was more a "throw one more backup layer" on things; when I'm in the car and carrying what I normally lug around, I typically have:
The ~100Wh car battery and USB adapter off the cigarette lighter.
A tank of fuel to charge said battery.
A car jump starter (in case said battery goes dead), with its own battery that can do USB.
A laptop with its own battery with USB output.
A tablet with its own battery with USB output
A small power station.
A second, 100Wh power station.
A ~400Wh large power station.
An unfolding set of solar panels with another small power station.
The aforementioned solar/crank charger with a very small power station.
Having to actually crank anything is going to be about at the bottom of the list in terms of things that I'm going to be doing in any situation, so this is about 9 things that would have to fail subsequent to my cell phone battery dying in a situation where there's an emergency for this to come up.
I did consider a more-serious charger at one point, but that would have been a pedal power station; it's vastly easier to generate a given amount of electricity with your legs than your arms. If having it in the car or house is all you need, that's probably a better choice if you're worried about it (and you can definitely find video on YouTube of people charging phones with it):
https://www.k-tor.com/shop/generators/power-box/
There's also someone that sells a tiny thermoelectric camping generator that can run on wood. If you're really concerned about needing power, my guess is that it's probably less-work to find something you can burn in that.
googles for the name
"BioLite"
https://www.amazon.com/BioLite-Campstove-Electricity-Generating-Charging/dp/B00FU8RBPE/
EDIT: I also have an AA-battery-to-USB-and-USB-to-AA-battery powerstation somewhere, but I don't know if that's actually in the car. I think that that's at the house.
You keep it in your car, I'm sure your car can charge your phone.
Arent you supposed to crank charge a battery for a while, and then charge the phone or other device via the battery? Or do you mean they couldnt meaningfully charge the battery at all
The ladder, they weren't able to get anything meaningful from a pretty great deal of effort into cranking it.
That's what you get when trying to charge a phone with a ladder!
But what if it's a Smart Ladder™?