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

MCT-Corp

How we estimate our external battery life

Hello,

Recently, we were questioned about our Ultimate Macbook External Macbook battery and did not quite understand what we mean by "2.5 to 6 times" the life of your Macbook.

First of all, you cannot expect the largest Macbook Pro to run 6 times it's internal battery. Because there is a range of MacBooks out there, from the Macbook Air's to the retina Macbook Pro's, we can only give you a range because our battery will support any Macbook model.

So in short, you can expect the Macbook Air to last approx 6 times whereas, the Retina Macbook Pro about 2.5 times.

Now. What do we mean by that? If your rMBP runs about 4 hours on it's own, it'll run for approx. 10 hours total from both internal and external battery when you start off with everything fully charged.  
4 x 2.5 = 10.

Let's not mention the other things too, such as the brightness, how long your hard drive runs, what background processes you are running, how often your Macbook goes to sleep, etc etc. There is not a exact science and everything is different from person to person (or laptop to laptop).

How we test our battery:
1) Fully charge both Macbook and External battery.
2) Wifi on, keyboard light turned on with automatic power on/off, Screen to 80% brightness, no sleep no dim for the duration of test.
3) Have about 10% load on CPU. (typical email processes, and background backup and syncing).
4) Run until laptop is forced to sleep.


Thanks,
Mikegyver.com