God help me, we're going camping at the weekend and will be needing to charge devices.
Can I charge my phone quite happily with the ignition on without worrying about flattening the battery? Battery is about 18 months so should be pretty healthy.
What about 3 phones, 2 ipads and a power bank? 😂 serious question! 🙂
Thanks.
Why not charge the power bank at home first?
Engine on or just ignition on? Idling on a campsite is very antisocial.
You'd be better off buying a bigger power bank or two to charge before you leave.
That is the question ign but I didn't ask for value judgements ta.
Of course I would be respectful to other campers, I'm not some inconsidersate prick. I won't always be at the camp site.
Charging the devices will hardly touch the battery. Leaving the ignition on may be more of an issue. Many modern cars have about 40 separate ECU's (computers), you are powering them all with the ignition on, as well as fuel pumps, coils, etc.
If your thinking about charging them simultaneously from the cigarette lighter, you'll get sod all power from it, so charging will be mega-slow, or pop the fuse.
Buy a big power bank.
A phone battery capacity is about one 50th of the cars capacity so charging one or two phones is no problem but it’s probably smarter to charge a power bank when you’re driving and charge items from that.
some cars don’t provide power to the lighter sockets etc when the ignition is off, or will cut the power to the sockets after a fixed period so charging while parked might not be that successful
some cars the stereo can be switched on for a period of time after the ignition is off and if it has USB you can charge from that
What car is it? I leave a usb charger plugged into the cigarette lighter on our Octavia and the little blue light is always on. So in theory would charge without having to switch the ignition on.
Most ignition switches have an accessory position, first indent/click. Assuming you are not keyless.
As mentioned above your car battery will easily charge lots of devices as it's huge in comparison to a phone. Just be wary of it also powering other devices on the car which will reduce its capacity quicker.
Just leave the engine running. You can have the AC on as well if it's hot.
And wind the windows down so you can hear the radio in your tent.
Yeah just in case it isn’t clear, idling your engine to charge a phone in a campsite is 490 on the **** scale.
Careful. For some reason our car which is otherwise reliable hates anything electric (lights, usb, radio) working whilst not running and needs jump-starting at the slightest opportunity.
Charging the phones may not be a big drain but all the other stuff that will be switched on in the car will be. You might get away with it in the first position, but if you leave it in the second position i.e. ignition on, it'll kill your battery.
The problem I found was that although it would charge with the ignition off, if I locked the car it turned off the circuit
If your thinking about charging them simultaneously from the cigarette lighter, you’ll get sod all power from it, so charging will be mega-slow, or pop the fuse.
Lol most lighters are fused at around 10a. That's 120w, trying to charge a 5ah (if you're lucky) phone battery. There's plenty of power. You can get dual USB smart/fast chargers that'll do 2 phone batteries in about 40 mins, and I bet they're nowhere near the fuse limit
Thanks everyone who was helpful. 😆
Does the campsite offer a charging area?
if not get a monster Anker power bank.
And wind the windows down so you can hear the radio in your tent.
And so you can get some nice pics for the 'Gram.
Just get a power bank of some sort from Amazon prices from £15 up
Assuming you can turn the alarm off I'd just connect directly to the battery then you know nothing else is draining the battery.
Just back from a few days family camping. We we're on one of these "nearly wild" campsites.
I use a combo of Anker power bank, for night time tops ups (works very well)
And I got a couple of these for the car so whilst driving some where during the day (we don't just stay on campsite), I could charge 4 devices to near full pretty quickly.
Works really well for camping trips and comes with solar, car, mains adapters etc.
Was also enough to power a laptop and printer for an MBO event.
Do you already have battery power tools at home? Almost all brands make a power bank adapter to clip on the battery for about £10-20. I've got four batteries for lawn mower and drills etc so that would be heaps of power to take with me.
If you turn off mobile data , Wi-Fi and Bluetooth then your phones will last ages
only turn then on when you need to use them
Get a jumpstart power bank - you can charge USB devices, and if you do run the car flat, you'll still be able to start it! Not as much capacity as you'd think, but they are effective in both roles.
As Stevie 750 says, put the phone in Airplane mode to charge a LOT quicker too.
some cars don’t provide power to the lighter sockets etc when the ignition is off, or will cut the power to the sockets after a fixed period so charging while parked might not be that successful
and some cars power some sockets and not others....
Get a jumpstart power bank
Been thinking about that - any recommended models?
I bought a Noco one from Halfords, seem to be well regarded online, only used it once but it worked!Been thinking about that – any recommended models?
I probably would've bought the Halfords own-brand one as it's cheaper but they were out-of-stock for the >2L diesel version.
Same - we have this one
It's started a car and charged devices. It only has the capacity of two large power banks, but I like the dual usage potential.
