Dashmellow
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2013
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- United States
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- Umpteen
The other day I was impatiently standing in the checkout line at the local "Dollar Store" waiting for some lady to pick put a bunch of party balloons for her kid's birthday. Of course, once a customer finally makes a choice in these weighty matters the badly underpaid and totally unmotivated checkout clerk needs to individually fill each balloon with helium and then make sure that she secures each filled balloon to a metal bar so it doesn't float away while she is ever so slowly filling the rest of the order and this can take, you know, like forever. So I killed time chatting with some of the other customers on the line while I glanced around at the all the crappy "impulse purchase" items they always keep within arm's reach just for such an occasion. That was when I noticed the one dollar power banks!
I've seen these AA cell powered USB chargers around here and there for quite some time now but they've never really interested me very much and all of them that I've seen before work with a minimum of four AA cells. I can't recall ever encountering a two cell version and logic would seem to dictate that two AA batteries wouldn't give you enough voltage to power a USB cell phone charger.
But I was intrigued and thought, "Hey, it's only a dollar, what the hell? They come in white or black, so I bought a black one and much to my surprise it has turned out to be the coolest, most bang-for-your-buck item I've purchased in a long time!
Of course, for only a dollar you don't get any batteries with this thing so when I got home I popped in two 1900 mAh 1.2 volt AA Eneloop NiMh cells. (BTW, I'm a big fan of good quality LSD NiMh AA and AAA cells as an alternative to alkalines and Panasonic's Eneloops are hands-down the absolute best available.)
So, I don't know exactly what circuitry they've got inside these little power banks but some testing showed that this thing takes the power from two 1.2 volt NiMh cells and outputs a solid 5.3 volts @ .4 Amps! The result being that I can run a super-capacitor powered Mobius or an SG9665GC for at least two full hours with excellent results. If I were to use lithium AA primary cells my guess is that the run time would probably be at least twice that, and perhaps more! To top the whole thing off, the power bank is built pretty well for such a cheap gadget and so I think it will last awhile.
This little thing is pretty handy and is an especially great match for a super-capacitored Mobius as it is a small external battery that will provide the same run time as the standard Mobius 840 mAh internal battery option. This AA USB Power Bank is almost the exact same size as a Mobius except that it is two centimeters longer being 8 centimeters in length compared with the Mobius case length of 6 centimeters. The power bank and the Mobius are both 3 and one half centimeters wide and they are nearly the same height with the Mobius measuring 18 millimeters tall vs 20 millimeters on the bank.
A very cool find! I may have to buy another!
I've seen these AA cell powered USB chargers around here and there for quite some time now but they've never really interested me very much and all of them that I've seen before work with a minimum of four AA cells. I can't recall ever encountering a two cell version and logic would seem to dictate that two AA batteries wouldn't give you enough voltage to power a USB cell phone charger.
But I was intrigued and thought, "Hey, it's only a dollar, what the hell? They come in white or black, so I bought a black one and much to my surprise it has turned out to be the coolest, most bang-for-your-buck item I've purchased in a long time!
Of course, for only a dollar you don't get any batteries with this thing so when I got home I popped in two 1900 mAh 1.2 volt AA Eneloop NiMh cells. (BTW, I'm a big fan of good quality LSD NiMh AA and AAA cells as an alternative to alkalines and Panasonic's Eneloops are hands-down the absolute best available.)
So, I don't know exactly what circuitry they've got inside these little power banks but some testing showed that this thing takes the power from two 1.2 volt NiMh cells and outputs a solid 5.3 volts @ .4 Amps! The result being that I can run a super-capacitor powered Mobius or an SG9665GC for at least two full hours with excellent results. If I were to use lithium AA primary cells my guess is that the run time would probably be at least twice that, and perhaps more! To top the whole thing off, the power bank is built pretty well for such a cheap gadget and so I think it will last awhile.
This little thing is pretty handy and is an especially great match for a super-capacitored Mobius as it is a small external battery that will provide the same run time as the standard Mobius 840 mAh internal battery option. This AA USB Power Bank is almost the exact same size as a Mobius except that it is two centimeters longer being 8 centimeters in length compared with the Mobius case length of 6 centimeters. The power bank and the Mobius are both 3 and one half centimeters wide and they are nearly the same height with the Mobius measuring 18 millimeters tall vs 20 millimeters on the bank.
A very cool find! I may have to buy another!
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