Sunday, January 29, 2017

How to make a backup light source in case you run out of power.

Hi Everyone,


If you follow our blog, you will see that we have blogged about how our batteries can be used for devices that are hard to connect, like Macbooks, Lenovo Yoga, and Microsoft Surface devices. You will also have seen that they can also be used everyday life to make your life easier ~ see how we stopped our dog from digging up our lawn. In this blog, though, I am going to tell you how they came about giving me much needed light in a really tight situation.

Not so long ago, Hurricane Matthew hit Florida with forces not recorded since 2008. We were blessed to escape with no injuries but like so many exposed to these kind of forces of nature, we found ourselves without power and no generator. In true #MikegyverStyle though I realized; we might not have a generator but we DID have TONS of batteries. 

I am sort of a "pack-rat" and save things "just in case" it can be used for something else - much to my wife's dismay. One of these particular items are automotive light bulbs that are only partially burnt out with one of their filaments still in working order.

Now as mentioned, we had TONS of batteries and quite a few of these partially burnt out automobile light bulbs, so I figured (as most people do who have ever run out of power or light whether camping or simply domestically) that our first priority was light!

A quick trip to the garage netted me a used bulb that I'd saved from my car. I then soldered up a wire and connector to the good filament on bulb, like this:


Set our voltage on the battery to 12v, plugged it in, and we had an instant light like this:



Now that we could see we could get more done and set about creating more #MikegyverStyle power solutions to get us through the crisis.

Of course when day dawned we whipped out our new solar panel kits to power up our batteries again and were ready for the next night.

I am grateful to our batteries for getting us through a tough time and my wife is now grateful for all the burnt out light bulbs I keep :-)

If you have one of our batteries and would like a step by step of how to set up your own Mikegyver LightBulb in case you are ever in a pinch, simply leave a comment below.

Stay Powered Up,

Mike

Monday, January 9, 2017

How our Batteries can keep you not only #PoweredUp, but connected too...

Welcome to 2017! We are happy to have you here with us and hope to keep you entertained for another year with our Blog on how to #StayPoweredUp!

So our first topic for the New Year is:


How to increase your internet reliability with your wireless router when the powers out?


My house has horrible wifi.  For some reason, my Apple Airport extreme has a hard time getting wifi signal into the next room even if it's just 25 feet away.  So I have no choice but to run hard Ethernet across my home, to my garage and to other Base stations so I can stay connected.  This would normally do the trick, but not in my case. As I had to run the cables around the outside of my house, around corner, and over the roof of my house, they were exposed to extreme weather and...squirrels!  

So when my cable got severed again for the umpteenth time, I decided to look for another solution..

After some research, I purchased the Netgear Orbi. This is a Mesh network that promises true internet speeds all over your house. I was skeptical at first but this router really works!  I could not believe the speed I was getting! Not to mention strong signal all over the house, even where I'd normally be gasping for Wifi.

Problem solved....  But in true #MikegyverStyle, I wanted an even better solution. So I thought: "Now that I am no longer tied to wires, why not make my wifi work even if I have a power failure!"

I am sure you can already see my shameless product plug coming :-), but it so happens that our batteries make a great Battery back up for your router when out of power. And let's not forget; because this is pure DC Power backup (UPS) it'll last longer on battery then traditional UPS's!


This picture shows our Mikegyver "Executive 34.2ah" battery, being used as a backup to our Netgear Orbi routers in our garage. How cool is that!?

If you are interested in finding out how it's done or you have any other innovative ideas around this concept, please comment below or email us!

Stay Powered Up,

Mike