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So you’re camping with your family somewhere when your cell phone battery dies, as do your camera and iPod. While your battery is the most important of these three, no one wants to live without their iPod! SolarPort fixes your little dilemma. The Brunton SolarPort 4.4 uses solar panels and USB to power up your gadgets once again. Just leave this baby out in the sun before you leave for your trip, or even when you are camping, and plug your devices into the USB ports to give them a new charge. So maybe the SolarPort functions as a safety device, but it also serves to keep your children quite in the back seat when their portable DVD player just ran out of juice. The SolarPort has three USB ports to charge three devices simultaneously. It is sold for $119.99.
— Nik Gomez
Brunton SolarPort [via SlashGear]
The Brunton Solarport 4.4 that I bought at L.L. Bean’s does a poor job of charging batteries. I recently hooked a battery up to be charged and it actually sapped the powere out of it! It may be that the diode meant to keep energy from discharging is blown or something. If this is a common problem then Brunton should provide some instruction on how to fix it.