Author admin

We've seen a lot of location based services form up around social media, but none of them seemed quite right for Voltaic. That's until we found SnapGoods, located in our same office space in Brooklyn....

Our new 2 Watt solar panels have small, embedded screws in each of the four corners and four super-light and low-profile plastic nuts. These allow you to attach them securely to your own...

The team over at SpeakDolphin study dolphin communication. They use the Messenger Bag to keep their Sound Devices 722 hard disk recorder powered up during research sessions and to charge their Droid X....

We've talked a number of times about powering wireless networking and it seems like Virgin Mobile's new MiFi will change what we use internally. All of us at Voltaic pass around a Sprint Wireless USB stick so...

There is an ongoing struggle to meet the energy demand in remote areas of the world. We haven't seen that many good articles measuring the efficacy of different approaches to providing power to remote...

Solar trackers can increase power generated by a solar panel by orienting the panel towards the sun throughout the day. This decreases the amount (and cost) of PV required to generate a given amount of...

This post is out of date. Please head over to our updated Solar for Arduino guide for more information.      We get a lot of questions about how to run an Arduino off of solar panels....

Have a solar panel and are looking to mount it? You have a lot of options, from the standard ground mounts, roof mounts, pole mounts, to RV mounts and a range of solutions that will secure your panel. We...

We recently read a report by the GSMA that lays out the economics for solar charging phones in developing countries. In one field study in Kenya, they found that phone users spend about $0.25 cents to charge a...

We love it when people mod our bags to suit their own purposes. A company outside of Alberta, Canada is taking our Converter solar backpacks, fitting it with a much bigger battery and connecting it to a...

We test-charged an iPad with our solar backpack and it worked, but with two caveats: 1) The iPad charges from a USB port like a phone, but its battery is 25 Watt hours (about 5x that of an iPhone), so charging...

Location: Sub-Saharan Africa Charges: MacBook Pro. Canterio International is an NGO that works with orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of the Pangaea Project, they travel into remote villages without...

Location: The Australian Wildlife Conservancy Mount Zero / Taravale Sanctuary. The Backpack's owner is Jay Riedl, the Development Executive for Wildlife Australia Fund. Solar charges: While visiting the...

Location: Kwala, Tanzania Solar Charges: A variety of devices, but cell phones were the most critical. The solar Messenger bag was used by SmallBean, a non-profit that brings electronics to citizens in...

Location: The half-pipe at Cypress Mountain at the 2010 Olympics Solar Charges: AT&T Mythic phone, Samsung HMX-R10 camcorder and Samsung TL225 DualView Camera. Karl and Jeremiah are video makers with...

Location: Rural area of Les Cayes Solar Charges: Blackberries and Walkie Talkies (both Mini USB adapters). Joshua from goodeater was part of a team conducting interviews with refugees from Port-au-Prince to...

Location: Where: Sela (or Se pass), the mountain pass from West Kameng district into Tawang. It is all in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in North East India. Charges: The Oxford University Expedition Team...

Location: Jacksonville, OR, home of our friends at Rain Tech who make rain water control products. Charges: "I love this thing. I take it out in the field with me to keep my phone, camera and WiFi...