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On this edition of our IFA History Feature, Chris tells us about a VHS competitor, and it is not Betamax:
In 1977, during the Internationale Funkausstellung, today known as IFA, the age of home video recording really started – with competing formats. In addition to VHS and Betamax, a European technology was introduced, heavily promoted by the two giants who had developed it, Philips and Grundig. It was named Video 2000 and again had two loops of 1/4-inch tape, one on top of the other, but in the same cassette. The cassette had to be turned over to record on the other loop.
Carolyn in the US Virgin Islands asked us about keeping her electronics charged during power outages:
During power outages what is the best compact solar system I could buy that could charge my technology which includes cell phones, tablets, mosquito bats and assorted battery sizes?
You’re going to have a hard time charging everything you want to charge on solar only. There are devices that can technically handle fairly high capacity batteries, but they take a very, very long time to charge under the sun.
For example, the PowerAdd Apollo Pro has a built in 23,000 mAh battery with a DC output capable for charging a laptop, however, a Droid Razr Maxx has a 3,300 mAh battery, an iPad Air has a 8,800 mAh battery, that already puts you at over 12,000 mAh, which means most of your charge is gone, and you haven’t plugged in a second phone, or second tablet, that mosquito bat or any of the other batteries.
Now to reach the full 23,000 mAh charge, they claim that “it will never take less than 38 hours to get a full charge.” Which means that you will have to keep this thing charging 24/7 to ensure that when you do need the power, it will be available.
Since that’s the case, you may benefit from looking at a regular battery that doesn’t use the sun to charge, but that may be able to charge more of your devices, for example, you could buy a 42,500 mAh battery from BixPower that takes 4 to 6 hours to charge. That would give you considerably more power if you want to charge all of those electronics.
Is a battery really the best option?
How long are these blackouts? because if they’re long enough for you to have to worry about charging so many different devices, maybe you’d benefit from looking at a generator instead. A basic one may actually cost you less than a high capacity battery (obviously, that’s not true for the more powerful ones), and you’d get power when you need it without having to worry about the current charge of the battery.