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SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries
- swagv1 10y agoWorks great when earthquakes take down the mobile network
- TheGuyWhoCodes 10y agoOr get a phone charger that runs on AA batteries
- bubuga 10y ago> Or get a phone charger that runs on AA batteries This. There are cellphone chargers on ebay that cost $1 and take AA batteries, which are quite capable of charging any phone that supports the USB charging interface. I bought one to use when I travel abroad and it works very well.
- reustle 10y ago> There are cellphone chargers on ebay that cost $1 and take AA batteries, which are quite capable of charging any phone that supports the USB charging interface Please do not plug your $600~ smartphone into a $1~ charger. That's just asking for trouble.
- Dylan16807 10y agoA 3 to 5 volt booster is not easily going to damage a phone. But fine, get a $5 model from a reputable brand. You can also get an entire phone for $10. It will even have a screen! Don't spend $50 on a piece of garbage.
- bubuga 10y ago> Please do not plug your $600~ smartphone into a $1~ charger. That's just asking for trouble. You're assuming that supplying 5v to a cellphone through a 5v USB charger is something that damages the phone.
- ars 10y ago> Please do not plug your $600~ smartphone into a $1~ charger. That's just asking for trouble. Why? Do you think they'll fight because they don't make the same amount of money?
- reidacdc 10y agoYes, this is very easy. One of my favorite features of my olde Palm IIIxe PDA was that it ran on batteries you could buy at the drugstore, and I wanted that for my smartphone, so I have an AA-to-micro-usb device ("AA power bank charger") that get me there. Ten bucks on Amazon, probably you can do better if you shop around.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoI didn't know those exist. What's the comparison like vs this phone? As in, one AA battery provides 10 hours worth of talk time per their claims. How many times or how much charge do you get from the USB version?
- icebraining 10y agoHow many times or how much charge do you get from the USB version? Considering that different phones consume different amounts of energy, and that different AA batteries have different capacities, that's hard to say. If you carry a Wiko Lubi like me, you can probably talk more than 10h with a single battery. If you carry an energy-hungry smartphone, you'll probably get an order of magnitude less.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoGotcha. Makes sense.
- int_19h 10y agoIt all depends on the phone, obviously. With a Nexus 5 and 4 Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries, I could recharge it to 100%, and then once again to 50%.
- digi_owl 10y agoLets try some math. Most mobile batteries today is 3.7V. An AA is 1.5V (rechargeable AAs are 1.2V). Once that is established, it all comes down to the mAh. Most AAs sold these days are listed as 2500mAh, multiply that with 1.5V and you get 3.750 Watts. Note that this is very close to what you get from a 1000mAh li-ion battery found in many phones (3.7*1000=3700). Now with a external li-ion emergency battery you will get conversion losses, as it has to go up to 5V for the USB and then back down again at the other end.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoVery interesting and EE-like approach. :)
- pchristensen 10y agoThis was hard to search for. Here's one that looks ok: http://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Power-Bank-Charger-97928/dp/B007MLHS2S http://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Power-Bank-Charger-97928/dp/B...
- digi_owl 10y agoOne thing to note is that it will at most produce 1A, and many variants may well balk at giving out more than 500mA (and only do so to Apple devices).
- clarry 10y agoI wish more devices used easily replaceable standard size cells of rechargeable and non-rechargeable variety. You can walk to any shop or service station and buy a bunch of AA or AAA batteries if it's urgent. And keep a spare pack at home, in car, etc. In most devices, the size & weight benefits of proprietary li-ion batteries mostly aren't worth it for me once the battery goes bad and you have to look for a replacement (which can be quite expensive, if you can find one to begin with). Forgot to charge the device? Forgot to bring a charger? Don't have a usb battery pack in place with no outlets? Sucks. Can't walk into a shop and get a fix.
- bubuga 10y ago> I wish more devices used easily replaceable standard size cells of rechargeable and non-rechargeable variety. You can walk to any shop or service station and buy a bunch of AA or AAA batteries if it's urgent. And keep a spare pack at home, in car, etc. There are already plenty of cell phone chargers in the market that take standard batteries. I don't want to sound like I'm advertising any product, but I've purchased a cheap chinese cell phone charger that takes AA batteries. It cost me just $1 out of ebay. I actually purchased it on a gamble, expecting it to be awful, but it actually works very well. It's a very simple gadget that uses standard AA batteries connected in series to ramp up the voltage from around 1.5v to a tad above 5V, which is then used to supply energy to a standard 5V USB charger. Depending on the batteries used, a 4-pack of fresh AA batteries provide around 1800mAh of juice. I've planned on purchasing another just to rig it to take C or D batteries, which provide the same voltage but hold a lot more charge, but honestly the AA pack works very well as it is.
- Johnny555 10y agoMost people don't want to trade off the size and weight for the flexibility of batteries that they'd rarely, if ever, take advantage of. I have a secondary bike light that takes AA's, it's both much larger and much less bright than my main light, which uses a LiIon battery. I haven't found a comparable AA powered light to my LiIon light. I got the AA light just so I could replace the batteries with easy to find AA's just in case all of my batteries ran low...In the 5 years since I got that light, I've never needed to replace the AA's. Since most devices are rechargeable via USB these days, most people are probably better off carrying a USB battery pack that uses AA's, then you're only paying for the bulk once (and it's quite light without batteries)
- vosper 10y agoThey really shouldn't be encouraging people to think of this as something that will help when lost in the wilderness (see the image on the page). There's a strong possibility that there'll be no reception. That's a situation where you need an EPIRB-type rescue device.
- anon327 10y agoHow long does the phone run on these batteries? A much better solution would be something that recharges your existing phone. Solar or kinetic motion.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoI keep a charging "brick" in my car, and just top it up every month. In an emergency, I could charge my phone/tablet about a half dozen times. I figure that's a lot more useful to me in a genuine emergency I'm likely to experience, than this toy.
- Klinky 10y agoUp to 15 years is what they say. That is probably a very optimistic estimate, but I would not be surprised that it could do standby for a very long time on a single Lion AA cell, as there is no screen. Solar and kinetic charging are bulky and cumbersome. At this price point they would probably be shoddy and unreliable.
- anon327 10y ago> Solar and kinetic charging are bulky and cumbersome. At this price point they would probably be shoddy and unreliable. There are some portable solar panels that can charge up an iphone with a few hours. If you have that an external battery pack that should be sufficient - assuming you are somewhere with good seasonal sun coverage. There has been alot of advancements in kinetic charging. I mentioned in another post the Ampy Move device. Its basically an spare battery pack thats integrated with some new innovative kinetic energy generation tech that a team of Northwestern University PHD engineers developed. Very portable and they claim that an hour of activity (e.g., running / hiking) can generate 1 hour of smartphone use (they use the iphone 5c as the benchmark device). That's really good! They claim on their blog that by just shaking it for 10-15 minutes you can generate enough charge to power a dead iphone to ring up an uber. I imagine the same ideas apply for when you're out in the woods.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThis seems like an emergency device for people who aren't actually experiencing an emergency. As vosper said, this is fine if you're lost in Central Park, not actually in the wilderness.
- castratikron 10y agoFeels hackable, I wonder what kinds of things people will come up with. Do they still charge monthly for service? I think some kind of wind-up cell phone charger would be more useful for people than a separate cell phone powered by AA batteries ("Hey, where'd I put those spare AA batteries...?")
- nandhp 10y ago$25 Annual Plan Includes SpareOne Locate and Alert service and 120 minutes of nationwide calling. Includes basic voicemail, call waiting and 3-way calling. https://www.att.com/cellphones/spareone/emergency-phone-prepaid.html https://www.att.com/cellphones/spareone/emergency-phone-prep... (But of course you don't need a plan to use a cell phone for 9-1-1.)
- asmithmd1 10y agoWhy bother trying to hack it? For $40 you can get an Arduino with a cell modem built it: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Seeeduino-GPRS-p-1909.html http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Seeeduino-GPRS-p-1909.html What about a SIM and data plan you ask? Head over to: http://neo.aeris.com/ http://neo.aeris.com/ With just a credit card, no contract required, you can buy a SIM for $2.75 and $1/month gets you 750k of data. You can turn SIMs on and off month to month. You have to buy 10 SIMs to get started but they are having a promotion right now to get 10 SIMs for the price of one. I have no connection to either Seeed Studio or Aeris other than being a happy customer of both
- castratikron 10y agoWow, I've actually been looking for something exactly like this. Thank you for sharing.
- jeena 10y agoWhy batteries and not a dynamo?
- donw 10y agoOr, you can just bring along a small USB battery pack, which can fully charge pretty much any modern smartphone. Personally, I carry an Instapark Novobeam 3000 in my backpack. It's about the size of a roll of breath mints or a small flashlight, is rechargable, has a waterproof cover, and costs about nine bucks on Amazon.
- Spooky23 10y agoWhy? You can get primary lithium AA batteries with a 15 year shelf life. If you need something like this, you don't need to fiddle with USB chargers
- stephengillie 10y agoAnecdotally, it's much more difficult for me to find AA batteries than USB - AA batteries must be bought from stores, and fewer recent devices use them. USB is available from almost any computing device, a growing number of displays and other peripherals, and increasingly in common areas. And AC-USB adapters are easy to get, spreading the convenience to every wall plug too. As others have mentioned, AA-USB adapters exist too, spreading USB's coverage to everywhere you can find AA batteries. As I hinted earlier, most recent devices have switched from AA to USB-charged built-in batteries, so a USB battery may have more utility than AA batteries these days. Tangentially, there's a behavior pattern prevalent in the "Prepper" (aka Emergency Preparedness) community that confuses me. They take a logically-sound concept such as storing large amounts of food, and seem to separate the emergency food from every day food. Here, similarly, we have an emergency device that is not usually used. How do we know if it still works? Test it occasionally? The USB battery breaks this pattern in that you can use it frequently and it's still useful in an emergency. And using it regularly can build a habit of keeping it charged, and you'll know if it breaks or goes bad before an emergency. I'm not saying AA powered emergency devices are harmful, but rather our emergency devices and processes should be our every day devices and processes, whenever possible.
- Spooky23 10y agoI'm not a "prepper" -- I just want a way to get help for medical emergencies when there's a power outage mostly. I get where you're coming from, but a primary cell Lithium-Iron AA like an Energizer L91 (http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/l91.pdf http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/l91.pdf) is up to 20 years -- probably more than the service life of the phone. I have a phone like this from about 10 years ago that we leave at a family camp (super rough cabin with no utilities). With the loss of quality, power-outage survivable POTS phone service, this type type of device fills an important niche. 20 years ago, NYNEX (now Verizon) would provide dial tone for 10-14 days in the event of a blizzard or other power outage. Now you get 24-72 hours from cable/internet providers at best. Another issue with conventional rechargeable batteries is they don't handle charging well when discharged completely. A cellphone left in a cabinet for 5 years is a brick in many cases.
- anon327 10y agoOr you can just purchase an Ampy Move (www.getampy), an external battery pack powered by kinetic motion. Instead of using the SpareOne, just shake the Ampy and recharge your phone. Ampy Team does this all the time to call Ubers and such when out late at night with a dead iPhone. Successful Kickstarter and raised over a $1MM from VCs. Lots of coverage in the media!
- bubuga 10y ago> Or you can just purchase an Ampy Move (www.getampy), an external battery pack powered by kinetic motion. That gadget is way expensive for what it does (around $90) and the reviews are less than stellar. Furthermore, some reviews state that it takes around 60 hours of running to get the ampy move to store a measly 1800mAh. For $1 you can purchase cell phone chargers that take standard AA batteries. For a bit more, but still a fraction of the cost of a Ampy move, you can purchase a rechargable cell phone charger. I don't see a single category or use case that the ampy move works better than the alternatives, which cost a small fraction of its cost.
- anon327 10y agoI think the reviews don't paint the full picture. According to the Ampy team less than 2% of customers have any complaints. [1] so you're probaly only reading the super disgruntled. It's likely they just got defective devices. I'm sure these sourcing kinks will be smoothed over for version two of the Ampy Move charger. They were just featured in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/technology/personaltech/fitness-trackers-move-to-earphones-socks-and-basketballs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/technology/personaltech/fi... [1] http://dailynorthwestern.com/2016/02/18/campus/northwestern-student-startup-ampy-responds-to-criticism-of-its-charging-device-product/ http://dailynorthwestern.com/2016/02/18/campus/northwestern-...
- NickNameNick 10y agoYou'll find remarkably few complaints from people who purchase homeopathic remedies. Doesn't mean that homeopathy works.
- mschuster91 10y agoHate to break the news, but this is nothing new. My first cell phone, when I was a young kid, was an Alcatel phone that could be run on either a normal battery pack or AA batteries or AA rechargeables. I miss that brickphone.
- chinathrow 10y agoSee their Twitter profile? https://twitter.com/SpareOnePhone https://twitter.com/SpareOnePhone >30k favorites, aka favorite spam. I hate those - everything is automated and it does not add any value at all.
- mrfusion 10y agoSo what is the best backup phone to keep in the car? I'd want some thing cheap with no monthly payments just for emergencies. Think how much it would suck these days to get lost or broken down and your phone isn't working! It seems only prudent to keep a backup with you. (Especially now that all Payphones have been removed)
- ams6110 10y agoAny old working flip or bar phone. 911 calls don't require a plan or service contract. You'll only be able to make 911 calls with that, however. If you want something that will let you make ordinary calls or text, you'll need something like a prepaid phone, which are quite inexpensive as well.
- mrfusion 10y agoAll the prepaid phones I've found seem to have minutes that expire. That doesn't seem ideal for something I'd never use.
- icebraining 10y agoThere are plenty of cheap candybar phones that last more than a week on a single charge. I use a Wiko Lubi, it cost me around $25 and does calls and SMS just fine.
- mrfusion 10y agoHow much are the ongoing costs though?
- icebraining 10y agoI live in Europe, so it's probably not comparable. Around here you can get a prepaid plan with no mandatory payments, the only requirement being making a paid call every once in a while to keep it active. T-Mobile seems to have a prepaid plan for $3/month, it's still expensive but not that bad. Alternative, you can just get the phone, then switch the SIM cards if your main phone is broken (doesn't work if you lose it instead, though).
- jschwartzi 10y agoIf these are cheap enough, they might make a good rolling burner phone. You just set up the speed dial to point to other SpareOne phones and then pass them out at periodic meetings.
- london888 10y agoFour reviews on Amazon so far, apparently the setup procedure is not simple: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BWHZGDU/ref=cm_sw_su_dp http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BWHZGDU/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
- london888 10y agoWhen I've been in trouble the lack of reception is the reason to worry, not my phone being out of battery.
- nateberkopec 10y agoIf it's a phone only for calling 911, why does it require a 2-year cell plan with data?
- reustle 10y agoI can't find anywhere where it states what type of plan this needs. Where did you find this info?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- newman314 10y agoHas anyone tried using gotenna for this use case? Just happened to see one the other day.
- urlgrey 10y agoA Yaesu VX8GR handheld HAM radio transceiver is my spare. I carry it in my work bag every day, along with a quarter-wave antenna, spare battery and a AA-battery adapter. It'll run for days as a receiver and can transmit at 5 watts - plenty of power to hit a repeater within earshot of someone who can call for help on my behalf. Although I work in a dense city, I'm not under the illusion that cell-phone infrastructure will be available for long after a major disaster, particularly an earthquake. HAM radios are also very useful when venturing into the wilderness. Many hikers monitor the 2m/1.44m calling frequencies periodically for distress calls. And at the right altitude your meager 5 watts can cover tremendous distances.
- stevewilhelm 10y agohttp://www.amazon.com/American-Cross-Weather-Smartphone-Charger/dp/B007KFLVTM http://www.amazon.com/American-Cross-Weather-Smartphone-Char...