I keep telling myself I’m going to get a thing like this for my raspberry pi, but I think I will let Moore’s law pan out with these until they are handing them out like thumb drives.
“Born for adventure”? Not if the thought of your iPad running out of power gives you the creeps.
All this and it weighs in at a feather-like 9 1/2 pounds!
(jk - yes I read the specs… 1.45 pounds which is still a lot)
Quite decent power density, I’d say.
We could do better. Ideally, we could go with fuel cells and metallic hydrogen. Or, even more ideally, a small fusion reactor; but things would be about to get rather difficult there.
Is the safe to take on an airplane? I heard there’s a limit on what battery capacity you can take on board…
In case of doubts relabel it as less of capacity to fit the limit. It’s lithium-polymer and these are quite safer and less volatile than the liquid-electrolyte ones. Still can go into runaway, but if it is not in the cargo hold the incident can be contained without significant risk for the birdie.
Thanks, now I’m getting curious.
Of course faking the capacity is plain evil,
Just as using a kindle during start/landing.
If the airline doesn’t consider it safe it’s not
Your call to say it is.
This official FAA site says
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/faa_airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf
I can take a battery of up to 100 watt/hours.
This means anything larger carries the risk of confiscation.
If I calculate the value at 5*30000/1000 this would mean it’s not allowed…
Man. Look at all those zeros. I wonder if we could fix that by choosing a proper basic unit.
Capricious arbitrary rules are also evil. Sometimes you need two evils to neutralize each other.
At the end, physics is the ultimate arbiter.
You just must not make a mistake.
When faking stuff, engineer defensively. You can get away with a lot if you won’t screw up.
Before I ran my cosmic radiation measurement experiment in-flight, I did a brief review of EMI-related large aircraft incidents (found one suspicion, otherwise nothing), and the ARINC bus (a highly EMI-resistant differential bus). Decided that a netbook and a low-power 400V boost converter together just can not have enough radiated power to cause any problem. Got two hours of time-radiation recording, a textbook graph.
Against the Holy Rules.
But ultimately safe.
You can take unlimited number of batteries up to 100 Wh, and up to two up to 160 Wh.
Make it 3.7*30; the capacity is of the cells themselves, and there is a boost converter inside.
You’re well within the limits. And if you aren’t too much over to be obvious, e.g. 200 instead of 160 so the package size is still within the allowed ballpark (you can’t negotiate the volume density of state-of-the-art batteries, it is what it is), you’re likely to get away with relabeling.
I have one that’s something like 26,500mAh and I bring it on planes all the time. In the cabin is OK, they don’t want it in your checked luggage, though.
It works great – but it’s just too darn heavy. Mine is slightly lighter than this one at just about a pound in weight, but I hate lugging it around. I’m going to go back to using a littler one that can maybe bring back a quarter to half of an iPhone charge in a pinch, instead.
True that. Overheating and fire in a luggage in the cargo hold is a major problem as the fire will spread. In the cabin, with the fire extinguisher and enough free space around and furnishing way less flammable than the average luggage content, such incident is likely to be just a minor annoyance.
A pound is nothing. I used to carry a lead-cell battery, before the Age of Lithium.
True. One time, though, I was backpacking in the mt Jefferson wilderness (a great deal of which has line of sight to a cell tower on mt bachelor). I had a new UV water purifier, to replace my old iodine tablets, and realized once I was out in the middle of the wilderness that I couldn’t get it to work. I called a friend on my (not smart, $10) phone, and had him look up the manual on the internet and tell me how to use it.
I think a better compromise for most of us non-adventurers would be something like Xiaomi’s 10400mAh alternative. One third the nominal capacity, 2.5 times lighter (250g), fairly rugged aluminum build, will (probably) also power your stuff for a long, long time. $14.
To paraphrase someone who knows his industrial design, this brand is one to watch for in the value for money department. They just need to get over the rampant Apple plagiarism, which is really getting ridiculous.
Oh, and watch for fakes.
Why is that a problem? At least if they copy the good (which is usually also the obvious) and not the bad (e.g. lack of connectors or oversimplifications of design)?
My opinion, as a longtime user of Apple things and fan of their designs, and a very satisfied owner of a crazy cheap new entry-level Xiaomi Android phone that’s refreshingly better than my beloved 2011-era iPhone 4S in pretty much every way, easily as good as anything else in the market costing 2-3 times what I paid for it (and seven times cheaper than the cheapest iPhone 6 in my sadly tax-crazy country):
This company to me represents a new wave of Chinese design and manufacturing that’s not only good for the price, it’s good. As in, hardware designed by designers who know what they’re doing and manufactured with good materials and not-far-from-premium precision. Did I mention all that and also crazy cheap? Even their software is refreshingly functional and free of bullshit compared to the idea I had of budget Android anything.
So I think they should have enough confidence to come up with their own design language and run with it, because being shameless copycats is not really useful at this point and frankly is the only thing holding them back if you ask me. Why make their supposedly-excellent mini router look exactly like a Magic Trackpad? It serves no practical function and cheapens the brand’s image. I say shed the knockoff reputation, give the new generation of Chinese designers a better challenge and see what happens.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
