I carry an action sports helmet camera just about everywhere I go instead of a point and shoot or DSLR. Most of the time for local mountain bike trails and outdoor oriented adventures but sometimes even for simple social gatherings. Usually there are plenty of places to charge up (home, car, laptop) or I won’t be burning through 1 or 2 extra batteries. However, my yearly family vacation got me thinking about alternate sources of power, mainly solar charging. It’s not exactly camping, but we stay in bungalows without power for a week. I could have just brought along some extra batteries, but I also needed to consider charging my iPad (reading books) and the off chance that my nephew runs off to film an epic movie throwing rocks into a pond for 2 hours. After pouring through countless mixed reviews of solar charging products I picked up a Solio Classic solar charger. It wasn’t necessarily the best or most reviewed (all products I found had mixed reviews), it just seemed like the right compact package for my needs and it was available in a retail location for my last minute purchase.

There are two main issues or considerations with solar chargers as far as I can tell:

1. How much energy can it capture and/or store throughout the day (the Solio Classic has a built in battery to store energy)
2. How much energy can it pass along to the device that needs to be charged

At first glance the concept seems pretty simple, but once I actually read the instructions I realized that for maximum energy capture, one would need to reposition the Solio Classic every 15 minutes during key daylight hours over the course of 2 days. While the Solio Classic has a simple design that allows easy repositioning, babysitting my solar charger isn’t going to happen, so I am already convinced that I am going to set it and forget it.

Once the energy is captured, the Solio Classic needs to be plugged into the device that needs to be charged. The Solio Classic comes with quite a few adapters, but I just need the MiniUSB adapter for my Drift HD170 and the USB adapter for my iPhone/iPad. My first test is to see how long it takes to transfer a charge and how much it will take to charge an empty battery in the Drift HD170 while the Solio Classic is at full capacity (fueled up from 9 hours of USB power). It appears to take 2 hours to drain the Solio Classic and that gave my Drift HD170 about 3/4 charge. Not bad, but grid independence is what I am looking for.

The next test will be in the field to see how long it takes to reach 100% capacity (from 0%) on the Solio Classic from sunlight, how long it takes to pass that energy along to the Drift HD170 and how much recording time is available on the Drift HD170. Based on the research I did, I should be prepared to capture maximum sunlight between the hours of 10am-2pm over the course of 2 days. I am not that patient so I intend to solar charge / transfer charge each night to see if I can keep the Drift HD170 “topped off” as much as possible.

In the field I ran into a few issues right off the bat. I intended to use the Solio Classic to charge my iPad and iPhone 3G the very first night but apparently I need a special adapter to do that (although I assume they could run off the Solio Classic if I really needed to use them, it just wouldn’t charge them). Since we focus on cameras here at camarush, I’ll just leave that at that. I purposely left the Drift HD170 on (even when not recording videos and pictures) to run down the battery and here is a journal of the charging/transfer times (all times/charges are estimates):

Day One

• Solio Classic fully charged via USB
• Drift fully charged via USB

Day Two

• Solio Classic used to charge iPhone 2G in the morning
• iPhone 2G went from 80% battery to 100% battery
• Solar Classic went from 5 blinks (80-100% full) down to 3 blinks (40-59% full)
• Solio Classic charged from sun 10:30am to 4;30pm (moved about 4 times for optimal sun capture)
• Solio Classic went from 3 blinks (40-59% full) up to 4 blinks (60-79% full)
• Drift charged from Solio Classic
• Drift HD170 went from 0% to ~50% charge
• Solio Classic went from 4 blinks (60-79% full) down to 1 blink (0-19% full – I assume 0%)

Day Three

• Solio Classic charged from sun 8:00am to 6:00pm (moved about 2 times for optimal sun capture)
• Solar Classic went from 1 blinks (0-19% full) up to 3 blinks (40-59% full)
• Drift charged from Solio Classic
• Drift HD170 went from ~250% to ~50% charge
• Solio Classic went from 3 blinks (40-59% full) down to 1 blinks (0-19% full – I assume 0%)

Day Four

• Solio Classic charged from sun 8:00am to 6:00pm (moved 1 time for optimal sun capture)
• Solar Classic went from 1 blinks (0-19% full) up to 3 blinks (40-59% full)

One of the tricky things that I never really understood was making the connection between the Solio Classic charger and the Drift HD170. It took pushing buttons (on both devices) in random order and I guess luck timing to initiate the charging sequence. When the Drift HD170 “sees” power, it wants to turn on to be used. To get into charge mode, the Drift HD170 needs to be turned off, but when I did that the Solio Classic reset. I am still unsure on the exact process to achieve the charging “synch” and it may be different if the Drift HD170 is already partially charged or completely empty.

Overall the Solio Classic works as expected except for the reality of babysitting it for optimal sunlight capture throughout the day. Over the course of 3-4 days of shooting nearly 32Gb of video and photos, I was able to maintain enough charge when I needed it and mostly just kept the Drift HD170 topped off. It gave me some confidence knowing that I could load up the Solio Classic before a trip and use it as a back-up and then top off during a trip. However, if you are going to be in a heavily wooded area or experience constant clouds or similar, you may want to reconsider relying on solar alone. This is especially true if your video shoot is for professional purposes. If that is that case, you will want to consider bringing extra batteries and maybe a larger roll-out solar pad. Next I’ll be checking into a hand wind up USB charger. Let us know if you think we should carry the Solio Classic and how you might use it.