Power, Storage and Distribution - Camping / Prepping / Survival

Now if you're interested in learning anything more about these particular items that I'm going to go through in this video, just click show more. The full video description will come up and I'll put as many links in there as I can. I'll also put a link to any useful videos that might relate to these things. I think I might have done a few product reviews on some of these things. I'll also put timestamps on as well so if you want to jump to a particular point in the video just click the time and you'll jump straight there. I really do that just for your convenience because not everybody wants to sit and watch a big long video you know. Hello there, welcome back. In this video I'm going to be talking about power. Now this isn't the sort of power that politicians seem to think they have over us plebs, but it's power that is actually useful and free. So let me explain. Hopefully everybody will recognise what this is. It's a solar panel. This one is a Blitzwolf 20 watt solar panel and when the sun's shining, point this lad towards the sun, connect one or two USBs and charge your small devices. Very very useful if the sun's shining. Now this doesn't come with a battery but I've actually married this up to a generic 20 000 milliamp hour storage battery. I would give you the maker's name but I bought it just as generic so it's basically just a generic one which probably tells you everything you need to know about the quality of it. It doesn't hold its charge forever but it is handy because it fits in here very very well. It's slim lined so it goes in there well. That's the only reason I bought that particular one. Now an infinitely better storage battery would be this fella. This is from EasyACT. It's a 26,500 mAh storage battery and this one has got a lot more weight to it and a bit more bulk as well but this one holds its charge a hell of a lot better. It holds it for months and months and months. Now this particular one has got two inlets for the power coming in from a solar panel or some other source so you can charge this one in double quick time. So for instance this particular panel has got two USB outlets. Both of those can be fed into here and you charge it in half the time. It's got four USB outlets and that means you can charge four small appliances at once from this, which is very good if you've got a GPS, a phone, wireless headphones, all manner of small items. They all use pretty much the same fittings. So that is an absolute belter. That's definitely the best storage battery I've had so far and I've had quite a few. That's the solar panel wrapped up. It doesn't take up much space, it's not particularly heavy and it's a good one for taking away camping or on holiday. I've taken this one on holiday with me a few times to warm sunny climates like Spain and the outlying islands and I just lay it out on the beach and the kids can charge up their phones or their games machines or whatever they want, tablet, without going back to the hotel room. Very useful. But if you want something that's a little bit more convenient, especially for travel, An empty case? This is what comes in the case. We've got a small waterproof, shockproof solar charger, one USB outlet, we've got a relatively light waterproof, shockproof battery, which is 9000 milliamp hours, so it holds quite a charge. That connects to the solar panel into here, and then we've got one USB outlet, which can charge up one appliance at a time. this comes with a notion of fittings so no matter what phone or small appliance you've got it will be able to charge it and this particular one also charges 12 volt appliances as well this is the extreme version there's an ordinary version which only charges 5 volt appliances so it's good if you can charge 5 and 12 volts it does cost quite a bit extra for that particular model but it is well worth it if you think in long term You basically just run your finger along the front of it to switch it on or switch it off as well. And it's got a little LCD digital display. Shows you when it's charging, shows you how much battery power's left. It's just a very, very good, well thought out power pack this. There is actually other fittings that come with it. The likes of a cigarette lighter sort of attachment for charging your 12 volt appliances. That's the little padded, tough bag that it comes in. Clamshell sort of design, wrapped up. Very impact resistant and pretty much dustproof once it's in there. Very good. So there you go, the future is solar power. It's got to be, hasn't it? Well, in the summer that would be true. And during the daytime, when it's sunny, that would be true as well. It's a very, very good way of getting power into your small devices and also into your storage batteries as well. What happens if it's cloudy, if it's raining or if it's dark? How do you generate power then? Well, believe it or not, These might be the answer, pine cones. You're thinking, how the hell are you going to get power out of pine cones? If you have one of them, which is a BioLite power producing stove, then you can do just that. You can get power from leaves, sticks, pine cones, pretty much anything woody that'll burn in here. What this fella is, is basically a biomass energy generator. There's a lot of people have these now in the houses on a bigger scale. So they'll be burning wood pellets or sawdust or compressed wood products and getting power out. So we've basically got what looks like a copper rod which has got a slit through the middle of it which goes into the flame. That heats up, heat's exchanged, power's generated and power is put into the little storage battery which runs the fan and it's also fed out through a USB So you can actually charge up your small appliances using fire. This particular thing also comes with a 1.5 litre cooking pot as well, which acts as a bit of a kettle. A very efficient, well thought out way to not only cook, but also generate power. So basically, if your fire isn't going very well, you put the fan on, it comes on low, sucks air in, drives it out, and you can see it going a lot better there, you hear it crackling. That gets the fire going, gets the heat really going. You want to get it going even more, you press that again and that's absolutely blasting out now and then when it's going well enough you hold in the power button knocks it down to low and then it knocks it off very very good they're reasonably expensive and i'm not going to do like a full review on it because there's loads of them on the internet i may do one at a later date when i'm out in the field somewhere but for this particular video i'm merely just running through Going through the various power producing items that I've got. This is a very good one. you can basically generate power anywhere where there's some combustible material any time of the day or night the best part is even when this has been going and it's full of red hot embers you can pick it up the outside doesn't get warm there you go it's just gone out there i'll get it going again the flames coming out the top absolutely hellish i really love this thing you know you class it as a luxury item but it is very very good If you're thinking about generating power for weeks on end or possibly longer, this is a hell of a solution, especially if you live like me in the northeast of England or somewhere else that's particularly cloudy and rainy. You know, you could go weeks without seeing the sun and your solar panels would be absolutely useless. Want to consider. Check the prices out on the internet because they do vary quite a lot, but it's a really well-made, beautiful product. And also, another thing worth noting is, it stands up off the ground, so you can stand it on grass, it's not going to burn the grass. You can basically set this fella up in any campsite without any problems of leaving marks. So people need never know that you've been in a particular place. Just a quick note, if you think that the BioLite thing is going to take up a lot of space, that's how much space it takes up. And that's got everything that comes with it in there. About the size of a summer sleeping bag, or maybe it's a hammock. Quite compact and very, very useful. Now, the next two products that I'm going to show you are more kind of prepping and disaster related. Now, the first of these sort of prepping items that I'm going to show you is a power inverter. This one's rated for 1,000 watts. And basically, what you would do with this is you would connect it to a car battery, and it would take the 12 volts and convert it into 220 volts. Now obviously if you're in the US or Australia or somewhere like that, I think you work on 110 or 120 volts, so you'd have to get a particular one for that. This one's suitable for the UK, which is 220 volts, 3-pin plug attachment on the end, and also a USB outlet. It's got a built-in fan to keep it cool as well, so that's a really good one if you need to run a mains-powered device from a 12-volt source. It's converted. It steps it up. It's also got a cigarette lighter attachment, so for your lower wattage appliances that you're taking out here, you know, anything up to, I don't know, 100, 200 watts, just use the cigarette lighter, but for something that requires a little bit more oomph, a little bit more power going in, connect it straight to the battery, otherwise you run the risk of burning out these little cables. It fits in a little box, which is very, very handy, so you can keep that in your car, or you can keep it in your shed, it's pretty much just a just-in-case item. It's not the sort of thing you take on like a backpacking weekend or even a short camping trip. You just wouldn't need it, you know. It's really a sort of prepper's item, that one. Talking of prepping, survival, that sort of thing. Long-term disaster survival. We've got this fella. This is a jump starter for a car or a small van. Now, I've reviewed this in a previous video. So, the link to that will be in the video description. I'm not going to go through all of the features on this or even demonstrate it. It does work and it works very very well but basically what we've got here is a high capacity storage battery which connects to a car battery or a cigarette lighter with this attachment or the mains if you want to charge it up and what this thing does instead of just trickling the power out to keep your appliances running it's more like a defibrillator for your heart. Say So you've seen someone who's had a heart attack, you grab the defibrillator, bang! That's pretty much what it does to car batteries, so you can have a car battery that's absolutely 100% dead, and you can start the car using this. I've seen them on The Walking Dead, carrying these things around, and they're huge, they've got a big handle on, starting cars up, don't need something that big at all. You can get multiple jump starts out of that tiny little thing. 12,000 milliamp hours, it goes down pretty quick if you're jumping, jumping, jumping. You know, you might get 8 to 10 starts out of it, but that's a hell of a lot of vehicles started from this tiny little item. And when I tested it, it did it first time every single time. Absolutely excellent. It's also got a flashlight on the end as well, which is pretty bright. Pretty useful if you break down or you see someone who's broken down and you need to jump start the car. This little fella does it. You can see exactly what you're doing as well. It comes in that tough little box, which will just slide under the seat in your car or your van or truck or whatever it is you're driving. It's an excellent thing to have, very, very useful. If not for you, then for somebody who you might happen to meet who's broken down, providing it's an electrical problem, that is. You can just give it a quick jolt, get it going, be the hero of the hour. So there you go, we've got some really useful stuff there for generating power, storing power, and distributing power. And the fact that we can now generate power when the sun's out, or when we can find something to burn, It means we never need to be without power. If we're stuck miles out in the middle of nowhere, our phone dies, we need to keep in contact with the outside world, we need to charge our GPS up, we can do it. Obviously, there are different price ranges. We've got the reasonably cheap solar panels, which don't come with any storage capacity. We've got different storage batteries. That is an excellent one, but it isn't the cheapest. We've got really robust solar chargers, more for your adventure and sort of types. We've got something that you can cook on and generate power at the same time in any weather, at any time of the day. And we've also got two items which would be very useful for long-term survival, prepping disaster situations, that sort of thing. I hope you've enjoyed this video and found something useful to take away from it. I do like making videos that have useful content, so if you've liked it, hit the thumbs up, share it anywhere you want, on forums or on the internet. Wherever you want to share it, if you think someone will benefit from watching it, be my guest, share it anywhere. Check out the playlists on my channel, they're split into different sections, so there's one for fishing, and there's one for bushcraft, there's one for pond building, metal detecting, basically anything that I'm interested in, I make videos about. So check those out, there's hundreds and hundreds of videos there, hours of entertainment, and also, hopefully, hours of education. Thanks very much for watching, I'll catch you in the next video. Hey, come on, man. Who is it? It's Dave, man. Will you open up? I got the stuff with me. Dave, man, open up. Dave? Yeah, Dave. Dave's not here. Now, in the quest to be really thorough in my videos, I might as well tell you about these wireless headphones that I was charging up. These are also from Easy Act. I'll put the link to them in the video description. And these are, without a doubt, the most comfortable headphones I've had. Sound quality is excellent. They're not particularly expensive either, and I've been through a nation. I don't like the ones that are wired all the way back to my phone, because the wire gets pulled out, it gets snapped, it snaps here, and they don't last five minutes. You know, I mean, I could literally get three, four weeks out of a set of headphones. I've had these ones now for months, and they're still working as well as they ever have. Now these ones hang on your ears, plug in. And whilst that might sound a little bit cumbersome, it isn't. I've got other ones which go around the back of your head and also loop over the top and you end up looking like a wingnut. Your ears end up sticking out like that if you've worn them for seven or eight hours during the day, which I do because I work from home by myself, all alone. I've got nobody but podcasts. So I listen to a hell of a lot of podcasts. I'll probably go through which ones I listen to in a future video. Some of them are quite strange, but I really like to learn stuff. Podcasts do that whilst I'm working, excellent resource. So having a comfortable pair of headphones makes a hell of a difference. It might be a little bit tricky to actually get on in the first place, but once they're on they can stay there for hours and you don't even know they're there, you've just got really, really good sound quality with all the peripheral noise blocked out. That's what I want when I'm working. You switch them on and off from here and you can skip tracks as well, you can answer your phone with them and all that, so I tend to wear them when I'm driving as well. And it's got a little charger there, it doesn't take long to charge up, it says about two hours from flat, I tend to find it takes about an hour and a half, and if I want to have these on all day and not run out of power, I'll basically give them a little boost for about half an hour whilst I'm eating my dinner, and that'll see them through right through the afternoon, after using them all morning. Very, very good, very light, suitable for active sports as well, quite often go jogging up the woods when I'm wearing these, you don't get any rubbing noises. they're just very very good headphones and now that the more modern metal detectors are using wireless bluetooth technology these are an excellent choice for that you block out all the wind noise and you can hear your little beeps and squeals and dig your targets when you finish metal detecting get the tunes on excellent Yeah, that's it. Good.