Van Life Essentials: I Bought Super Cheap and Easy Solar on Amazon

0:00 next video today we're going to talk about solar we're going to start uh we're going to look at like three or four different systems and we're going to start with the simplest cheapest easiest solar that i know of so that you can just jump into solar if you have minimal needs you'll spend

0:19 minimal amount of money you'll spend minimum amount minimal amount of time and energy thinking about how to do it a lot of us just use usb devices we have a phone an ipad maybe we have a camera with that we can charge with usb we need what we need a light we need fans those are the really

0:38 basic essentials of living in a van and if that's you and that's all you need then what may work just really well for you is a little cheap fifteen dollar or twenty thirty dollar uh solar panel like this one this is a very old uh 15 watt panel think of that this is 15 watts and uh it was a friends of mine's it was

1:02 made by renegy and and it's my friend has been using this for years and it just works perfectly it's never failed it just works great and you'll see here it's just got a single uh usb port that comes out so it's just got this one single usb port that comes out and she puts this on

1:25 her dash or on her windshield uh when she's parked and she has her usb devices charged and it works really really well but recently these things have really really improved they've become much much better than they used to be i just bought this one and i don't even really know much about

1:44 it i can't give you a review or anything yet but this was made by tp solar and it's 30 watts so this is a 30 watt panel it's no bigger i think in fact it's a little taller but it's not as long so this is 30 watts twice the power now this is a lot more money this was 60 dollars but a number of things i think it's more

2:06 efficient it's it's monocrystalline if you're wondering and it has uh two usb ports here you see this is the the usb port outlet but if you'll notice there there's also another port and that's a 12 volt outlet port and that's very unusual and that's why i chose this one you can get these things

2:30 with up to three outlets in them but this one had the two outlets and one of them is a quick charge if you know much about uh 12 volt usb charging now there are standards out about how you can charge things really really fast um and so the qc qc3 is a kind of a standard and if you

2:51 have a qc3 charging device and plug it into this qc3 charging port then you'll get much faster charging and so that is a really really uh handy really handy thing to have and so that's why i chose this one and the 12 volt outlet port let me show you something else that this came with that

3:13 really stood out to me was very unusual i hadn't seen one that did this other than tp solar and i'll put a link down below so again here's the outlet port and you can see that there's this other round port here and i'll get closer so you can see that and and it comes with this extension

3:34 uh that that one bin goes into the this and then another end goes into this and now you have uh you can hook these right up to a battery so if you are worried about your battery trickle charging and running down you could hook this up and trickle charge your battery all day with it now at 30

3:57 watts is very little power you have to understand that 30 watts is very little power but you can still set this thing up and and trickle charge it really well so i think that's a really big plus it's the only one i've seen with that what really made my decision on this one was it was about the same price as all

4:14 of them 30 watts for 70. 69.99 and uh it had the cute quick charge usb and another usb and it would uh it would do this too trickle charge and i thought that was worth buying this one over others i haven't tested it i'll do a long-term testing and actually do a review of it this isn't really the review of it now

4:33 so you're you're gonna you say i'm gonna do this but bob what am i gonna do overnight there's no power overnight it's just during the day well then for that you get these these are just you know you've seen these these are batteries this is a 20 000 amp milliamp hour and this is a 28 000 milliamp hour

4:51 this big one here is is a little different it also has the two usb ports but and then it has a usbc and a charging this is called a power delivery pd another standard power delivery this one delivers 45 watts of power that will charge a lot of your laptops directly so if you have a laptop that

5:14 will charge with the usbc from c to c this hat this will deliver power delivery that's what this is this will deliver 45 watts of power through the usbc port and that means you can charge your laptop with this now 30 watts is pretty minimal i don't know how long you could keep your your laptop going with just

5:34 that a lot of the new laptops especially the macs nearly all the macs now charged with usb ports usb c ports and uh the surface goes all do and a lot of laptops anymore charge with that so that is a big plus now these are more expensive a 45 or 60 watt power delivery brick with 28 000 milliamp

5:56 hours will be more in the ballpark of 50 or 60 dollars so that's still good if you can run your laptop if you have that this will be a really good thing now what kind of things can you do with just one of these one of one of these bricks one of the expensive ones or one of the cheap ones

6:15 well the first thing you're definitely going to need is a light a usb light so this is a usb um bulb and it also i'll demonstrate it for you i'll turn this on this has an on off switch now it's on and yeah you aren't going to be able to really see it in in this bright daylight i'm in the

6:36 really bright daylight here uh and all i have to do is uh plug it in and this has a nice uh on off toggle and there it's on you can see that come on and it's off so you can see even as bright as it is it'll stand out there's a really bright sun right midday it works really well i really like this

7:02 light it puts out a fantastic light this is the only light you would really have to have in your light i'm in your van i've been very very pleased with that uh it was like 15 20 bucks i'll put a link down below and all the information on it down in the description and then of course you know you're all

7:18 familiar with the uh lucy lights um they have the solar panel on back and so uh a lot of them now and i would only buy one that came with a usbc usb charging port so that you could charge it not just off the sun but with the usb and of course you're familiar with these so these are uh they're 20 bucks

7:42 and you can buy all kinds of off-brand names for much less just buy one that has usb charging and you're really good to go has the solar panel that'll keep the solar panel will keep you going and then you can charge it off your power bank if you need to really really good idea and then of course you're all going to

8:01 run your cell phone and you know cell phones are so smart anymore this is probably all you need is just your basic cell phone you can get your new your gmail you can watch youtube you can watch you can do almost everything your your navigation is on a smartphone and and this brick uh you keep this uh 30

8:20 watt panel out in the sun all day every day and just keep this brick full every day you'll run that's all you can run this forever uh so your smartphone and a light uh that's really great but there's one more thing you've got to have if you're going to live in a car van and that's a

8:36 fan i mean in the winter you don't care of course and sometimes in the winter you do but this is a usb fan and i love this thing it's made by opolar i'll put the description i'll put the link in the description it's just a fantastic fan uh and so i'm gonna turn it on i just just plugged it in you know

8:55 it's just a usb plug in uh i i'm there's no electricity out here take my word for it other than this so now i've got that in and i'll turn it on and you'll see it go on and it's a great fan this is the mostly the only fan i use if this died today i'd buy a turn around and buy another one i mean it's like six

9:15 inches away from my mic uh but it's really really good i love that fan i would if it died tomorrow i'd buy another one just like it except i'd get the battery okay uh now i'm a big fan of ipads and they're a whole lot less power than your uh any laptop they're really low power this is

9:35 an ipad mini i i picked up along the way i got this one used um and i got it for to use on a drone that's why i have these uh but the ipad mini draws very little power it's usb of course it'll run on these they're very very low power it'll run for days on this on these big bricks i'd go a

9:52 week probably easily uh i've never tried and i don't know that for sure but i bet it would so the mini is a really great choice you can do your your email you can watch youtube videos it's a very pleasant play games on them now this is an older uh one that's somewhat underpowered the

10:09 new ipads will play any kind of game really really super fast so it's really amazing that the ipad pros are just their their productivity machines i do have an ipad that i use a lot this one has lte built in that means that and this the plan on this lte is unlimited data so that means i can watch youtube

10:30 until the cows come home and they'll it will never fill up the data and i've got a little keyboard on it you can see i just bought a little cheap keyboard off of amazon and this is a very good productivity machine this will do great for photo editing you can this does a great job of video

10:47 editing yes this uh there's a especially on the ipad there's a program called lumafusion which just is great on these things and it's plenty fast it renders fast uh you can get these with uh drawing drawing on an ipad pro in particular or one that has uses the pencil is just fantastic i mean it's

11:07 just fantastic on these things they're if you do any kind of graphic arts work this is a machine you should have and you'll be very glad with just it by itself and so you can run these off of your uh laptop no problem off of this little solar panel and one of these bricks and finally if you have a real camera

11:24 uh you know this is a canon m50 and it's a great camera i really like it and and you know it has so what i do is go on amazon and buy these little cheap clone batteries for my all my cameras and they come with the charger so this the two batteries and this charger probably cost me forty dollars

11:44 and so i can charge my batteries off of this for uh my camera and all but all but the biggest camera you can charge off of usb so that's a very good thing gopro uh this is an act the gopro product um this is uh charges off usb c so it charges really fast and uh that's an example you know a

12:06 gopro would be a great camera for a lot of you to carry and so you can just charge it right off here too so my point is that usb is really probably all that you need and one of these a 30 watt panel like this and and one of these bricks or a couple of these bricks is probably all that you need

12:30 to uh if you have very very simple needs so this one the the 30 water is 69.99 it's 70 bucks and then uh the big brother is just almost exactly double it's 137.99 and so it's a 60 watt but yeah what it comes with mc4 cables the 60 water and they also have 100 water and it's more uh then

12:53 you're up into real power but to say this and the 60 water has mc4 connectors and so you can you can charge that to anything with an mc4 you can connect it to anything at all okay so i'm gonna stop there that's your first choice now we'll look at the second choice uh this is an excellent one for a

13:11 hundred bucks seventy dollars for this you can buy the cheapest cheap twenty thousand milliamp hour one of these for thirty thirty five dollars so for a hundred five hundred and ten dollars you probably are good if you were a true minimalist as far as electricity you can do all the stuff that i've shown you

13:29 lights fans batteries smartphone ipad lots of great work with just these two devices cheap and easy ultimate cheap and easy solar so there you have it folks hope you got something out of this video you saw a really cheap and easy way to get into solar come back for the next video where we talk about

13:50 uh how to the next step uh in complexity in in having solar but it will do more okay uh i hope you got something out of this video if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you on the next video see you then

14:15 [Applause] you