Prepper Electronics for Disasters, or Just Camping (they have a lot in common)

At some point I realized that camping is great practice for emergency prepping. Gotta think about food, shelter, bedding, clothing, and - the focus of this diary: Electronics. I don’t go camping just to sit around on my cell phone (and some areas have no cell coverage anyway) but it’s good to have a charged phone for emergencies, to take pictures of nature, and to play music.

I was a little surprised that so many folks in recent hurricanes didn’t have a way to charge their cell phones and sometimes laptops. These days cell phone battery chargers are really cheap, this set of 2 cost me about $21. Most cell phones have a 2,000mAh (milliampere-hour) battery, and these chargers supposedly have 10,000mAh capacity. But in reality you get about 2 charges off a battery like this. Great for an emergency or any situation, and my kids use them all the time. But the kids kept losing them so I started numbering them and adding Rick & Morty stickers - that helped. I always keep one of these in the car.

It’s also a good idea to have lanterns for the night time. Some of these lights hook up to a USB such as the aforementioned battery chargers. Others (the three in the back) have their own internal battery that usually lasts a couple evenings, but needs to be recharged off of a bigger battery after that. The lanterns usually cost under $20 each. And I like lanterns better than flashlights because they don’t blind people, they give softer diffuse light.

Recently I bought a 12,800mAh portable battery for jump-starting a car, which also has USB outlets for charging cell phones, and should charge a laptop as well (though I haven’t tested that). This one was around $35, and I keep it in the car at all times, for obvious reasons.

But the top dog in my setup is a 35Ah (that’s 35000mAh) 12V battery that I put inside a water resistant case. Together costing about $150 total. This one runs my trolling motor (attached to an inflatable raft) for a couple hours, and I can use it to charge the other lanterns, batteries, etc. And the best feature is the 50watt solar panel ($45) and charge controller ($25) which helps recharge the battery after boating. But the charging takes almost a full day, so I’m going to add 1 more panel and 1 more battery next year and see how that goes. I really like how this setup just collects power from the sun, since outlets aren’t available and gas generators aren’t allowed at my preferred campsites.

And if you need a normal household 120V AC outlet for charging other random things (like an air mattress with a built-in pump) then you can attach an inverter like this ($80) to a 12V battery, even your car battery is fine. This particular inverter can handle 800 watts, which isn’t much, only low-load items. If you want to run power tools or heating/cooling (anything like that) you’ll need a much bigger inverter, and probably a bigger 12V battery as well.

Of course there are also products like Jackery, which combine a lot the above features into one battery system. It can charge from solar panels, has USB outlets, and has the household 120V AC outlets as well. They start around $350 for a small unit and a solar panel, but quickly get up into the thousands for larger units. They seem like a good idea for anyone who really wants to be prepared — without hobbling together random electronics like I do. Still, I’ve never tested one, and I’m skeptical about what kinds of loads they can handle per cost of the unit. If anyone has feedback on Jackery (or the knock-off versions) please share!

Final point — most of these items have to be ordered online, and should be tested to see if they meet your needs. So you have to prepare in advance, BEFORE the emergency hits! And with the way climate change is going, we’ll definitely have more and more need for emergency prep.

Hoping to hear about your emergency prep gadgets if you have any — please share!