Testing the blogging app on the iPhone

This is probably of interest only to myself. How do I maintain my blog while in the remote wilderness? I'm testing the blogger app on my iPhone. While it looks like I can blog fairly easily, it seems that I don't have the option to prepare a post offline for the time when connecting to the internet is not an option. Hmm, looks like I need to figure this out.

Testing further, i took an iPhone picture from the window of the train from where I'm writing. A grey day overlooking lake Zurich!

Portable solar cells

After a long career in photovoltaics, I finally decided it was time to get a few solar cells for personal use. Other than a few gadgets, I've never had any for home use. Since I'm an avid hiker, I decided to get a portable variety that would allow me to travel for longer journeys without the need for an external electricity supply. I'll explain this motivation in a further post. The desire is to be able to charge a camera, an iPhone and a small computer, but not all at the same time! I chose a SolarMonkey Adventurer. Rated at 3 Watts and weighing only 265g, it comes with a couple of polycrystalline silicon solar cells, an internal battery and MPPT (maximum power point tracking) circuitry. At 700mA, the rated output current is sufficient even for such a gluttonous device as an iPhone.

Today was a beautiful, sunny winter day. Time for a test. SolarMonkey's battery was completely empty when I placed it on the balcony in the sun today. While it was in the sun charging, I decided to use the iPhone until the battery was empty. That was easy. The iPhone played Pat Metheny music until it went silent. Good - no sign of life in the iPhone despite revival attempts.

And so, how did the charger perform? After letting the iPhone charge for 2 hours, the battery showed it was only one notch from being fully charged. Success!