Prep Gizmos that work and are worth it
Most of the time I can get internet service via my cell carrier. The only real controlling issue is coverage. Which is getting better, slowly, but it is getting better.
Last fall we lost power to the house when some idiot took out the power lines just down the street. While the house was without power we still had internet to our phones. We didn’t lose outside communications and if there was an issue I could have used my phone as a modem to get my main computer back on the net to do work by just using the genset.
I could also use my laptop (Chromebook running Linux) and not needed the genset.
When the entire town is without power everybody is attempting to get online via the cell carriers and there just isn’t enough capacity for that. This means that while my phone would get push notifications attempting to do anything else while the town was awake wasn’t really happening.
Regardless, because my business is support I needed to be available. Even with no power. Even with no internet. So my phone was on the entire time. If I had gotten an emergency alert from a client or server I would have been able to move to a place where I did have internet in order to do my work. No big deal.
But having my phone on and actively attempting to do things means that I was burning power. Which brings me to these gizmos.
This is a battery with two type-A USB ports for charging other devices, like your phone. It has a third port to allow you to charge from other power sources, like a car or house. The added extra is those solar panels. It is just a little larger than my cell phone in its otterbox and about 3 times as thick. There are four solar panels when it unfolds and in our Northern Climate it takes about 8 hours of direct sun to charge.
I get three charges for my phone from this. If you need to be able to charge your devices this might be useful to you.