Go camping with your camera? Now you can charge stuff while you cook

[Ezookiel]

LOL. Just when you think you've seen every geeky gadget for camping, along comes a campstove with a generator to power a USB port, so you can charge things while you're cooking.
Is there such a thing as a USB charger for Canikonolympuntax batteries? This might be just what you need to keep snapping away after you've been chomping away.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/camp-...home_multiline

[arthurking83]

USB power is max 5 volt.

I don't know of any DSLR battery that is under approx 7.4 volt .. the pro level 1D/D3 type batteries are more like 11 volt.

Some(most/many??) compacts may run the lower voltage version of the normal Li Ion battery at about 3.7 volt .. so you can probably charge a P&S.

[Ezookiel]

Suspected as much. My incar charger for my Canon batteries runs off the 12v, and I'd not seen anything that ran off USB to charge. Even if it did, it would take a very long time to charge them. Looks like it's mostly to keep the phone charged up for those that use the camera in their phone

[Bennymiata]

I would imagine that the generator could be modified to produce more than the normal 5.1, or so, volts used for USB devices however.

[arthurking83]

I would imagine that the generator could be modified to produce more than the normal 5.1, or so, volts used for USB devices however.

Probably, but if it doesn't have the current capacity to output a higher voltage .. it's pretty useless for most devices.

Say it outputs 5v @ 1amp, that's a total of 5W output.
If you manage to get it to output 7.4V, the device can still only manage to output the same total of 5W(that's fixed by the device), but now at 7.4V the current will only equate to about 0.75A.

It may top up a low 7.4V battery and give you a few more exposures .. but it'll take days of continued charging to get it from a 'dead state' to a fully charged state(if at all!).

This is why it'd be great for a small compact camera with a 3.7V battery.