Electricity is like water...

Hi!

Did you know electricity is just like water? 

Recently we had to troubleshoot a problem with an adapter that kept blinking on and off when connected to a Surface Pro 4. After extensive troubleshooting I realized that this might make for a great blog. So here we go...

A customer approached us with what he thought was a problem with one of our car adapters; no matter what he did, it kept blinking on and off. I told him that the power source (his vehicle) was not providing enough power. Obviously this suggestion was laughable though, after all, it was a brand new large and powerful vehicle, plus his other smaller devices where working fine. Plus on top of that, if he put his Surface Pro 4 to sleep, it worked fine for a while.

But his setup was not regular in any way and as mentioned before...it was a large vehicle. 

No matter how much I tried to tell him that the wires going to his adapter did not have enough power to keep his Surface powered up, I could not convince him though that there was nothing wrong with our adapter and was politely asked to mail when we had an upgrade that fixed his power cycling problem even after showing him that a smaller car with less devices and shorter cable run from engine compartment to cab solved the problem!

The bottom line was that we were fighting physics!

In order to explain in the simplest possible way, I will use an analogy:

The power supply to your device is like a small garden hose. Your smaller devices just need the garden hose to be happy. Your larger devices (like the Surface Pro 4) need a Fire hose. You CAN get around this is by putting your device into sleep/shutdown mode so that it has enough time for the garden hose to fill up the internal cup (battery) thus allowing for water to be pulled from internal cup and the vehicle. But, when that cup gets depleted, however, it simply pulls from garden hose again and then starts to choke.

So in order to fix it, you have to give it a bigger hose...so it has plenty of water to operate on. Obviously to turn your "garden hose" into a "fire hose", you need to give it a bigger wire. 
Another thing to consider sometimes is a bottleneck between the power source and the device. Think of it like a kink in your water hose.

I hope I have made something rather complicated a bit clearer...if not let me know in the comments below  :-)

Stay powered up!  

Mike
MCT-corp.com

USB-C Adapter for full line of USB-C Macbooks!

Available soon!

We have had so many requests for our USB-C battery and Car adapters for Macbook Pro's (and other USB-C devices) and so have decided to give you a bit of a teaser with pics of our prototype.

Our prototype in production

When done, it will be compatible with all our batteries, and will charge from your car. It will support full line Power Delivery devices including the 87W Macbook Pro as well as USB-C outputs of 20V,4.3A,   20V,3A, 14.5V,2A, 9V,3A and 5.2V,2.4A

Not Pictured: USB-A Output:  3.6-6.5V/3A, 6.5-9V/2A, and 9-12V/1.5A

We have had a few delays in getting our USB-C to work with a wide range of device but we think that we should be ready for release in around 2 more months.

In the meantime, we have sent a few prototypes out into the market to select individuals for testing to assist us with our final design so please let us know if you'd like to consider testing one.

If you would be interested in placing a Pre-Order, please let us know in the comments below.

Stay powered up! 

Mike
MCT-corp.com

Why inverters are a waste of energy.

Inverters vs Direct Current.

We have actually covered this issue so many times on our website and Q&A pages, that it took me completely by surprise when I realized that I had actually never blogged about it! So you, our loyal blog followers have never learnt why inverters are a complete waste of energy or why you cannot use inverters for your large devices such as Macbook Pro's - well at least not from me :-)

So without any further ado..after just receiving yet another email from a user who asked why he should switch from and inverter which would cost him $39.95 to our more expensive setup... I figured its time to explain. 

Without making it too complicated, 

1.  Inverters convert DC power (car/Airplane/boat power) into AC power (household power). 
2.  Say for instance you are using an Apple adapter with an inverter, the Apple adapter actually  converts the AC power BACK to DC power. 
3.  You can see for yourself that you are wasting a tremendous amount of energy converting from  DC to AC,  then BACK to DC. (That's 12vdc -> 110vac -> 16.5vdc in Geek speak)

TADAAAAA!!

Obviously, this could mean a dead car/airplane/boat battery sooner then you think if using straight battery power! For this reason inverters are often times useless on airplanes because they supply limited power and also why inverters will almost always fail to charge your Macbook or will charge it but shock you in the process.

Here is a diagrammatic representation of the scenario:



The above diagram, however, depicts how our DC adapter works. It just modifies what is already laptop friendly DC power (in your car/airplane/boat), from 12vdc to 16.5vdc. A small step up and no wasted energy! Also, because it is extremely efficient, it leaves you with enough power to charge your Macbook Pro enough to last your entire airline trip - including delays - not to mention longer run times if you are using batteries.

 If you are an avid follower, you will remember one of our previous blogs in which we lent our DC adapter to a fellow airline passenger who was experiencing this exact same problem!

Our solution may not be the cheapest, but we can assure you that you will get more work done as we will most certainly save you time, and as the saying goes... "Time is money"!

Stay powered up!  Efficiently :-)

Mike
MCT-corp.com

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 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

MCT-Corp

Enjoy the great outdoors with free energy

We are so excited about our NEW ITEM in store.

YOU ASKED. WE ANSWERED!

Mikegyver now offers solar panels that will powerup all your devices.

Nowadays, if you have the right resources, you can access the internet almost anywhere. Even some places in the middle of nowhere. It is a bit harder, however, to find a power plug in a tree. :-)

So, in true Mikegyver Style, we would like to introduce our Mikegyver 80w and 100w solar panels. Enough power to keep your most power hungry devices powered up anywhere!

The solar panel coupled with our battery will recharge our batteries during the day and keep you powered up through the night.

Our solar panel options, neatly fold up into slim, easy to carry, brief case sized bags come with your choice of one of our Batteries and limited time only, car adapters*!

http://mct-corp.com/products/Solar-Panels/

to sweeten the deal we are offering a 30% Dicsount on the above package. Just choose the discount code that matches the social media site that brought you to our blog or the MCT code if you are a blog follower and use it in store today.

Facebook: 30SOLFAC
Twitter: 30SOLTWI
LinkedIn: 30SOLLIN
Blog: 30SOLMCT

Stay Powered Up,

Mike

MCT-Corp

The New Macbook Pro's

Hi All,

As you might have heard, Apple is now shipping the New Macbook Pro 13" and Macbook Pro 15", and its a beauty.

We wanted you to know that our Car adapter is only rated for the Macbook USB-C 12" and that in traditional Mikegyver style,  we are ALREADY working on a solution to assist you with your new Macbook. We hope to announce our solution within 1-2 months.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for a Macbook USB-C 12" car charger, you can find it is here.

Stay Powered Up,

Mike

MCT-Corp