Say that all the stores around are out, and besides, no power. Is there any way that one could pretty easily make some low-powered electronic that could be used to slowly charge a phone? Maybe solar-powered or something.
It would be possible, certainly. I mean, you can theoretically make a charger out of potatoes, lemons, or carrots. There's also wind power, or maybe there's one of those eco-gyms nearby where the machines only run when you're walking on the treadmill? I think the machines power themselves, or something. Or maybe you can have the characters fight each other over the last few full phone batteries? What about using a car battery? A converter shouldn't be too hard to find/build, and fuel is a lot easier to conserve over time than electrical charge.
Was kinda looking for something not fancy, or is common (never seen an eco-gym, that's pretty cool). Ideally, looking for something that can keep being used. Basically, I have a character that sings and dance along to music. But he's not actually listening to music because he has no way to charge his phone. He's just pretending. His way of coping. Well, a member of his group steals something similar to The Anarchist's Cookbook, and I want there to be something in the book that allows this guy to build him a battery charger or something that allows him to keep his phone charged, and ACTUALLY listen to music.
A bicycle with a dynamo, maybe? Or a car with gas and a phone charger... Or, well, the engine charges the car battery, so you can work with that. Your character could find a way to build a converter in that book, and then you just need to find some wire.
Yeah, that's true. Know of anything more portable than a car battery? Looking for something my MC can lug around in his backpack. Doesn't need to be insanely detailed, but want it to be accurate.
If there's no power there won't be any network to use the phone on. Or is it being used for GPS? (if satellites are unaffected) That aside, you can easily charge a phone using solar. As long as you have the bits. I charge my electronics in the wilderness all the time when going on long walks, including phone, using a small solar panel. A power bank pre-charged by solar would be faster.
Whatever you come up with has to be limited to 5 volts DC -- and my understanding is that it has to be REALLY close to a true 5 volts or it does un-nice things to the battery. It doesn't take a lot of current -- I think the standard A/C to USB adapters are 1.0 amp and the fast charge ones put out 2.0 amps, but the voltage has to be pretty close to spot on.
Get a hand-powered crank or a solar-powered charger. Unless you've got a full on machine shop and electronics store, you're not going to get to recharge a phone.
Solutions for all post apocalyptic dilemmas can be sourced by searching for ingenious prison modifications......to fix this problem. I just did it and found detailed videos on how to improvise phone chargers, though you still need some kind of power source, using abandoned batteries and the like. There may be means of generating power if you delve deeper but you might want to go private. Damaging the phone is hardly a priority and could become a point of high poignancy when the thing finally dies half way through Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, encapsulating our descent into utter barbarity.
You can make a solar charger by gutting some Dollar Store garden lights and wiring them in series. I did that once upon a time. Never worked very good, but then I never claimed to be an engineer. That was back in the days of flip phones and comparatively simple, replaceable batteries. Not sure if it you want to try sticking a smarphone into anything that isn't a purpose-built AC-DC inverter/charger. He's charging AA and AAA batteries, but there's no reason you can't charge cell phone batteries too. Efficient? Probably not. But if you're a post apocalyptic hobo with little background in the field of electronics then it's probably about the best you can do, and you might be able to get through a few mp3s before it fries your phone.
If you do have some background in the field of electronics then you might be able to do something like this I guess...
That second video may very well be my solution! I'd have to figure out a plausible way for them to get a cordless drill, but they do visit an out-of-business (duh) restaurant, so the beater, wooden spoon, and foil could be gotten there. The charger/USB itself could be made with literally some paper and some copper. Copper could probably also be gotten from the restaurant from old appliances. Maybe for the drill, there's a hardware store nearby or something. But doesn't seem too difficult to build, even for someone in the apocalypse, and could be small enough (if you use a smaller piece of wood) to be portable (albeit at the expense of using up a decent amount of space in my MC's bag [but he cares FAR more about the music than anything else]). Hell, if your cordless drill is small, you use a shorter and thinner piece of wood (possibly even building a hinge where you place the phone to make it foldable after charging), and remove the spinny part of the drill head after use, might not take up that much space.
