Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Outdoors
  4. Evergreens

Weekend Workshop: How to build a DIY solar charger out of Altoid tins

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Need something to keep you busy this weekend? Look no further. The Weekend Workshop is our weekly column where we showcase a badass DIY project that you can complete with minimal skills and expertise. We’ve dug through all the online tutorials on the web, and gone the extra mile to pinpoint projects that are equal parts easy, affordable, and fun. So put on your work pants, grab your tool belt, and head to the garage — it’s time to start building!

There are few feelings capable of leaving some as dejected as having a smartphone with less than 15 percent battery and a full day’s worth of activities ahead — be it an eight-hour work day or weekend outing with your friends. Considering the fact that 15 percent will likely drain itself completely before you even get to your desired location, you don’t simply want a portable charger, you need one. But who wants to spend upwards of $50 on a power bank from Radio Shack?

Recommended Videos

Certainly not Instructables user Sethaulton who devised an incredibly savvy method for assembling their own portable USB charger out of nothing more than a couple old Altoid tins and some small solar panels. Sethaulton’s finished product — a fully-functional USB charger with an additional power bank — is the best solution for not only keeping your phone charged throughout the day but doing so on the cheap.

Weekend-Workshop-061816-2
Sethaulton/Instructables
Sethaulton/Instructables

To help you get started on this project, we’ve gone ahead and sifted through the Instructables walkthrough to piece together an exact list of tools and materials needed for the build. It is worth noting that this particular walkthrough requires the use of a soldering iron, so it’s imperative you either know how to use one — or know someone who does who can help — before attempting to construct this solar charger. Here’s everything you’ll need to get started:

Tools:

  • Dremel tool
  • Hot glue gun and hot glue stick
  • Soldering iron

Materials:

  • Electrical wire
  • Altoids mint tins (2)
  • DPDT switch
  • SPST switch (2)
  • Rechargeable AA batteries (5)
  • MintyBoost 3.0 kit
  • 0.5W solar panels (2)
  • Packing foam
  • Paint — color of your choice

Now that you’ve assembled the necessary build list, it’s time to start building this innovative DIY solar charger. Simply follow Sethaulton’s step-by-step Instructables walkthrough and before long you’ll be the proud owner of an incredibly unique Altoids tin portable USB charger. Happy building!

Rick Stella
Rick Stella
Former Associate Editor, Outdoor
Rick became enamored with technology the moment his parents got him an original NES for Christmas in 1991. And as they say…
Topics
A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing
Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.
a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Read more
AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users
A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.
Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.

Read more
Etsy cracks down on AI slop listings. Everyone else needs to take note.
Now every platform must decide what counts as handmade.
Etsy featured image

Platforms tend to shrug off AI clutter until it threatens what they sell. For Etsy, that thing is trust in the maker.

To protect that, Etsy has banned AI-generated how-to guides and listings made entirely by bots. Most sellers must show at least one unretouched photo of the item (via Etsy Seller Handbook).

Read more