Of course to be thorough I need to track my miles. In the past I’ve only tracked time using Joe’s Goals. You can see my tracker in the sidebar. Now however, because of a fitness program at work, Joe’s Goals, and MapMyRide, I’m doing a bit more.
My favorite way of tracking things is using the MapMyRide App for my HTC EVO phone. However the battery life for the EVO is pretty dismal. On my last ride to Haleiwa I had to swap batteries two-thirds of the way through the ride resulting in two different tracks recorded. That in itself isn’t a problem, I don’t care about the number of tracks as much as I do the fact that on extended rides I’ll never be able to charge up my batteries. Until now…
I did some research on small solar panels. Many of them seem fine until you do the math and figure out that while they may put out enough juice to power a low-end phone they don’t have enough horsepower for a smartphone. I’ve heard iPhones are particularly finicky about power but luckily my EVO sucks up anything it can find. Still some panels won’t do anything, or worse.
Then I came across GoalZero (also found as Goal0). They make a variety of products in all sizes for outdoor applications. You can read about them and their founder, Robert Workman, at their site: GoalZero.
Their smallest kit, consisting of a solar panel (Nomad 7) and battery pack (Guide 10) looked like it had enough power to do the job for me and remain portable. Nothing else I’d come across fit the bill so I figured I’d give it a shot. If, I figured, I could put the panel on the rack on my bike and charge either my phone or battery pack (or both) while riding I could use my GPS and have enough juice to take photos and blog a bit while riding.
Earlier this week my package arrived. I immediately gave it a try to confirm it all worked. On my laundry day this week I took everything to the roof and tested it out. The whole thing is about the size of a trade paperback so it’s very portable. Sure enough it put out enough to charge my phone. In addition I can use the Guide 10 powerpack (4 AA NiMH batteries) to charge the phone as well. Either way I should be good to go.
I still haven’t given it a thorough try on my bike so I’m hoping that afterwork today I can give that a go. Here are some images of everything up on the roof at work. Of course I was using my camera phone to take the images so you won’t be able to see that connection, but everything else is there.
It’s clouding up outside so I don’t know how it will go in a couple of hours when I get off of work and ride home, but I’m hopeful. My ride is about 90 minutes so it should be a good test if it’s still sunny!
Aloha