Ok, Here is a little project I have been working on with my spare time, and I thought it was worth a mention here.
I live in Arizona, and well, we see the sun a lot. I also am the proud owner of a second generation iPod (10Gb, touch pad). Anyway, I find that I use my ipod in places where I dont have a chance to regularly charge it. I usually forget to charge it in the car on my way to work, and it only gets plugged into my g4 at home when im updating songs. So, i got to thinking that there must be a better way. The iPod charges in the car with a 3rd party DC adapter with a firewire plug on the other end. The system used the car's 12v DC system to charge, and the only electronics in the cigarette adapter is one fuse. So, with a quick visit to Frys Electronics, I purchased a $20 12vDC Solar Auto battery trickle charger, and a $6 firewire cable. With some fancy wire splicing and shrink wrap tubing, my little project works great. The solar panel has a built in LED which prevents the ipod from draining when the light level gets too low.
Perhaps when i get some extra spending $$, i'll set up a h2 fuel cell iPod charger....someday
In a related idea- i found that a smaller solar panel assembly, available at Edmund Scientific (1.5vDC/200mA) works great to recharge watch batteries.
Thats great, and it reminds of those solar bookendz for the PB 1400. i wonder if it would have enough oomfh to charge a laptop in under a year(the one you made)
You could probably do what some "iPod Battery" jobs did, and just reverse-engineer the power adaptor to work. Would be pretty simple, albeit blocky and would cover up the high-speed port on the bottom.
Could you provide some pictures of this...I cant quite imagine it.
Since the iPod is designed to be powered off firewire, it must be able to run off any voltage from 7V to 36V DC. This means it should work extremely well with an unregulated source like a solar panel.
I too found this great product called Solio produced by Better Energy Systems in the UK. It is a solar powered charger with its built in lithum ion battery that will store mains or solar power for when i need to charge my ipod or my cell phone.
it is also super small and has the coolest design!
check it out at www.solio.com