Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear

Posted by: teacher

Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear - 03/31/20 08:02 PM

Its a good time to test your electronic gear, give everything a recharge/top off and see if your backups are in place.
Posted by: LCranston

Re: Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear - 04/02/20 01:52 PM

+1 Teacher!
Posted by: teacher

Re: Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear - 07/06/21 08:16 PM

recharging reminder*
(though most electronics only need a top off every six months or so.)
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear - 07/08/21 12:10 AM

Originally Posted By: teacher

(though most electronics only need a top off every six months or so.)


I'm finding some of mine need topped off in as little as a month due to the electronic power on. My Garmin GPS for example, will run its AA's low if sitting for a month powered off. I've found that if I keep it plugged into a powered USB port though it uses the USB power rather than draining the batteries. My current project is adapting anything not USB C to USB C (a lot of older Garmin uses mini USB, they never seemed to switch to micro) and am running the smallest lightest USB cables I can in my pack to a USB battery bank. Then the next project will be fixing up my own power source based of some of the raspberry Pi UPS's rather than a typical off the shelf USB battery pack since most of those don't provide power while they charge and use a manual power button to turn on. So I'm going to make a typical ups which will pass power straight through while also charging its battery and then switch over to battery power if the input power is removed.

We had bought my son a cheap car jumper pack from WalMart which had a bluetooth connection and would send a reminder when it needed topped off. I'm going one step up and working on a system which will monitor and top off my gear for me.
Posted by: teacher

Re: Tech talk - time to update, charge and test gear - 07/26/21 10:29 PM

re-charging my external phone and laptop batteries now...