It’s less than $80 shipped. Worth it to put in the car and when you are in the middle of Yellowstone hoping the bears have eaten you can toast a marshmallow and listen to the Xanadu soundtrack.
This here is black magic:
Charge your Gadgets: By converting heat from the fire into usable electricity, our stoves will recharge your phones, lights and other gadgets while you cook dinner. Unlike solar, BioLite CampStove is a true on-demand source.
Probably would work if you break it up first. This device relies on force airflow to work efficiently and reduce smoke and soot so if you tried to jam big chunks of it in here it probably won’t work as intended.
That said, the bigger version is probably better suited as they really seem to want you to use twig sized/shaped fuel in this one.
Hard to believe, but this technology dates back almost 2 centuries now:
They had cell phones back then!?!??!
the description says something about charging for use… after the initial charge will it charge itself for next use? How long will the battery keep a charge between uses?
Well, kind of. They were flip phones.
A very bad idea. Got one for Xmas, and we pretty quickly realized that it might be the most worthless thing ever. WAY too heavy for backpacking, it weighs 4 Lbs or so. If you are car camping you don’t need a charger, which is it’s only real benefit.
We did try it, got a nice fire going in it and connected my iPhone to it. Once the thing was actually putting out power (it has little lights) my phone went from 23% to 19% in about 45 minutes, which took a constant supply of small twigs. In other words, it wasn’t putting out enough power to maintain, much less charge, my phone.
It did put out enough power to light the LED USB light that came with it so we knew it was generating something.
And it does get very very hot. Kind of like a blast furnace.
Well except for the fact that all the trees blew away.
Calm down, switch to decaf, hit the back button on your browser and actually read the description…it’s there and it does explain what it does.
Come back when your reading comprehension is up and apologize for being a party-pooper.
Having a charged phone wouldn’t have helped them. The towers were out.
Would take a lot of these to power the cell tower…
roasting a marshmallow with one hand while texting on my iphone in the other. What’s not to like???
I was intrigued; I’ll admit that much. I sort of wanted it, even though I have absolutely no need for this stove, but I can say that about 25% of my Woot! purchases. Anyway, the comments have been FAR more entertaining than usual, so my time so far has been well spent. Think I’ll go look at that Ninja blender I’m not gonna get… Wonder if it’ll blend Yak dung?
When you charge your phone from a low-output source you should activate Airplane Mode. This will turn off the cell radio, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This will charge your phone much faster. Also, quit playing games and checking the progress while it’s charging - the screen uses a lot of power also.
My recommendation for a charger like this is the same as what I say for solar chargers - it is better to charge a power bank battery from this and then charge your phone from the battery later (like when you sleep and can keep your phone off). Power bank batteries are much less picky about fluctuating output than something like a smartphone would be. Apple products are notorious for stopping a charge if the voltage varies too much, but a power bank battery doesn’t care.
He fixed it and shows how to make it more robust
Agree with Airplane mode, but for fastest charge, turn your phone off. The screen is usually the biggest power consumer.
Also, this thing does not direct-charge devices attached to the USB port - there is an 18650 battery inside that you can pre-charge and that gets charged by the heat-to-electricity circuitry. When you plug your phone in, you are drawing juice from the 18650 battery. The fan works off the battery too.
I’d like to know if anybody has used this in adverse weather-- seems like it might be better to have a gizmo to hold yer burnables rather than a firesteel and dried leaves on a wet, windy night.
Can charcoal briquettes be used instead of twigs?
I own and have made several wood fired (gassifier) stoves (without the electronics this one has) and I have found that flames are needed, not embers. I have successfully used wood pellets, but the idea of these is that you gather your fuel when needed, not carry it in with you. The savings on weight and flexibility of fuels make wood fired camp stoves attractive.
Even in a downpour if you are in the woods there is plenty of dry wood fuel still attached to or hanging from trees. Once you gather it you need to keep it dry but finding it should not be a problem unless you are in the open with no trees.