I've just come back from a very hot and sweaty week camping in the lakes.
I needed a way to charge the 4 smart phones and 1 tablet that I took with me so before we went I bought a small 7ah 12v sealed lead acid battery and built it into an enclosure with ciggy lighter sockets built in so I could plug the various charger adapters into it.
I also took a small 1.2w solar panel ( the sort designed to trickle charge your car battery whilst in storage) which I had kicking around hoping it would keep the battery topped up in between charging stuff. It worked OK for about 4 days but then the batteries ability to charge dropped off.
I'm assuming that the solar panel was probably doing very little and I had just depleted the battery over a few days.
Now without getting too technical (I've just been looking on a site that got waaay too technical !) can anyone suggest what output solar panel I should be using ?.
The battery isn't being used during daylight so the solar panel doesn't have to 'keep up' with the discharge rate but it does need to top the battery up during the day so that it can be used in the evening or overnight to charge the various devices.
I would rather not have to use a solar charge rate controller if possible.
I was looking at a suitcase type panel rated at 4w with built in discharge protection diode would this work ?
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