>>1370128>>1369990>bring 5lbs solar panel and a 10lbs SLA battery>vs>bring 30lbs of little batteriesSome of us don't do car camping.
>>1369990>AC stuffThat's a good option, but if anyone reading this is really serious about this stuff, the best thing you can do is ditch the AC gear in favor of DC gear. Then you won't need the extra weight or energy drain of an inverter. There is a lot of RV gear and camping gear that is exclusively for 12v DC. There is now lots of stuff for solar setups too in 12v, 36v, and 48v. Nearly all electronic devices like a smartphone, laptop, etc that use an AC-DC wall adapter also have DC-DC adapters for use with vehicle cigarette lighters. Either the manufacturer of the device sells them or a 34d party will sell them. You just need to match up the VDC input range to the device and its power input connector.
For my 36watt Asus netbook, I have a 12v 105Ah SLA deep cycle car battery (for home us when electric is out) and a small 12v 15Ah SLA for camping, clamp-on car battery cigarette lighter socket, and cigarette lighter adapter for the netbook. As for charging the batteries, I have solar for camping, solar for home, and pedal power for home. The pedal power outputs 12v-17v at max 2.5amps, but at 14.4v and around 1.5amps is the best. Let me tell you, it is a pain in the ass to pedal charge a battery. I can't even imagine hand crank charging anything that requires much regular use at all.
Recently, I've been researching stuff to charge my DSLR batteries, so I can use my camera for much longer while camping and be able to dump extra images from the camera to an external HDD hooked to my netbook. Those EN-EL14a batteries for the camera don't last very long in the camera or when fully charged and waiting to be used.
