I use my media player, a Creative Zen Vision W, to listen to podcasts and occasionally I’ll watch a video on it or let my kids watch videos on it. The other day the battery was dead and I decided to use my small solar circuit to charge it up.
This solar system completely charged the Zen media player. Here’s how it is connected.
Two small panels are outside in the sun, with the cable leading into the house.
The cable connects to a charge controller. The charge controller safely feeds the solar power into a 12V deep cycle battery.
The power from the battery goes to a DC-AC inverter, producing 120V AC. The AC inverter is connected to my multimeter so I can see how much current the Zen is pulling during charging. You can see that the Zen AND inverter together are pulling 0.88A.
You can see in the above image that the white AC adapter is plugged into an AC inverter, taking 120V AC to the media player to charge it up.
Media players are one of many small devices that can be powered or charged using modest solar panels.
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