BioLite Camping Stove

[mark9atq]

Jamie - You are right of course. The weakest link in any system determines its robustness.
The Biolite might rate a 10 on the scale of complexity where a knife would rate a 1 being the
simplest machine in a Bug-Out Bag and least likely to fail. After looking over the guts of the
stove I could probably replace the fan motor and the battery no problem with scavenged parts.

If the computer failed some inventive rewiring and several added switches would be needed to
operate the stove in a crude manual mode to put a charge into USB rechargeable gadgets.
But only with the help of a volt meter to monitor stuff.

Just guessing but if the fan failed when there is a fire in the stove (worse case?) you would have to
immediately dump the fire out onto the ground, then un-dock the power module
and immerse the heat collector rod into cold water to save the TEG from melting.

The Biolites internal computer board - better not drop this power module on a hard surface or use it as a hammer to drive in tent stakes etc.


The TEG - Thermal Electric Generator - assembly

[mark9atq]

This vimeo of how to use the Biolite stove is pretty good.
http://vimeo.com/41167959

They say an interesting fact about USB charging smartphones that pull more than 0.40amps ( the stoves continuous output spec ) when charging.

The stove will change them all but will suspend its output intermittently when it needs to recharge the internal battery
then turn the USB port back on and continue charging. The code that Biolite wrote for the microcontroller inside the stove seems to
have covered all eventualities.

All the user has to do it keep the fuel chamber supplied with fuel. And if you have kids that can be sent out to collect sticks
and feed the stove while you relax to blog or watch a movie on hulu , so much the better.

[Snow-Ape]

One of my co-workers got one in yesterday and I had a chance to play with it today. Pretty neat little unit... very high production feel and very polished in design. Burns really well since the battery pack and charger on the side has a two speed fan that blows air into the bottom. We brought half a quart of water to boil in about 4 minutes with little more than some twigs. It also throws heat pretty well and could see using it for comfort heat to take the chill off in a tarp or lean-to.

Its not however very light in the way of a pocket stove and is about the size of a nalgene bottle but because it gobbles up kindling, fuel is almost unlimited.

I do have apprehension about powering "an ipad in the back country" because that's the kind of stuff that I'm usually there to get away from, but I do carry my cell phone and GPS with me, both of which can be charged with this stove. Also, Ipod is a great piece of morale kit, in a SHTF survival situation. What it isn't is light weight pocket stove... You can cook on it, provides morale heat, and "caveman tv".

My work also takes me to the field in rugged locals at times and there'd be value for me to have something like this to power or charge a phone, iridium, laptop (not sure if it pushes enough) so I think its pretty slick. One of the things about this stove is that it just clips on through a flat side of the stove... one of my first thoughts were "It'd be cool if I could clip this onto the side of my SO stove", right there in my tipi... I'd reason that you should be able to mount this to the side of other stoves if you cut the holes the right size.

[mark9atq]

Hiked the California Sierra with my Biolite stove for awhile. It made mac-n-cheez, fried trout, bannock pan bread, and endless pots of hot water. Plus it recharged my camera battery when it got low. But mostly it was like a little reactor
pouring out the btu's endlessly. And so convenient to have it within arms reach of the sleep bag and not be roasted alive like an open fire would do. So far it gets a thumbs up.



breaking up dead and down lodge pole pine turned out to be the easiest way to make finger sized pieces to stoke the flames
and get an approximate time sense of how often to add a few more.

[mark9atq]

Was curious enough to rig my Biolite to measure the internal power out from the TEG into the circuit board,
and simultaneously measuring the power consumption of the fan while the unit is fired up and all the while with a load connected to the USB port and sucking power out the the gadget at its continuous rated amount of 0.40amps @ 5volts.

Fan on Low speed uses 0.105amps @ 2.65volts while the TEG is generating 0.66amps @ 3.67volts.
So fan consumes 0.278watts. The USB port load is consuming 2.0watts and the TEG is generating 2.42watts
so that leaves an extra 0.142watts to run the computer and recharge the internal battery. Ok.

Fan on High speed uses 0.197amps @ 3.96volts while the TEG is generating 0.903amps @ 3.72volts.
Now the fan consumes 0.78watts. The USB port load is still being sucked at 2watts and now the TEG is
generating 3.36watts which leaves an excess of 0.579watts. So a device than is being recharged and consuming
more that 2watts is possible. The computer will manage the charge.

Anyway the catch is with the fan on high speed the stove burns up wood so incredibly fast its hard to keep up. Pause to eat or drink something and the solid wood you just crammed in will have magically turned to embers in seconds and the roaring flames you saw moments before will be gone and you'll need some thin sticks to get it flaming again.

Low fan speed gets the job done fine and is what I used exclusively when camping.

[TacAir]

http://theepicenter.com/cgi/order.cgi?p ... l&cart_id=%%cart_id%%

The Epicenter store is now offering several TEG as part of cooking equipment - some with an output of 12VDc, up to 8 watts. ($449).

Not cheap, but now more and more devices starting to show up...

[Bruno_GO]

My next aquisition.

[zombiepreparation]

The little news & viral videos show I enjoy called Right This Minute just had a spot featuring the BioLite Camping Stove. Dang, I can't wait until I can afford one.

[mark9atq]

Wonder how much of a trick it is to make a DIY power pot, cup charger that would be durable?

. Sure the TEG has to be surrounded with high temp RTV goop to protect it from water splashes, and where it touches the upper and lower metal plates some sort of thermal conductive paste needs to be added. Protecting the wires from flames with some silicone tubing and a metal shielding duct seems easy. Getting the lower metal plate that the flames will actually
touch stay in position with the upper pot of boiling water is the trick.

Saw rivets holding the assemblies together in one design. Although this looks quite sturdy those 4 rivets will conduct heat
making the TEG less efficient. Ideally heat should just flow thru the TEG like in the Biolite stove design.

[mark9atq]

Took the Biolite on another multi-day hike. 4 hikers w one Biolite and it worked great.
We all took turns feeding sticks into it and managed meals easily. Not having to worry about
running out of fuel plus the speed this thing boils liter after liter of water made everyone decide
they had to buy one also.


Blueberry pancake feast, California Sierra. Just below 10,000ft altitude.

The little foil shield idea seemed a good one to protect the TEG module because out in the real world the wind
constantly changed direction at all our camps.

[catalyst]

i ordered one yesterday. i'll let you know how it works out.

i've used TEC in the past for cooling old Pentium 2 processors. The way it works is: it generates voltage depending upon the different in temperatures on the opposing sides. This is why one side has a heatsink, and the other is in the heat. I'm actually considering making something else, similar.

I guess, you could put a device like this in a sleeping pad for winter camping, and cool one side on the frozen ground, and warm the other side from your body heat - and that would also generate power, but the difference might not be great enough to actually yield anything usable.

For $140 i figured it'd be worthwhile to check out.

[mark9atq]

Since the Biolite does not give out a warning chirp or beep when it needs you to put some more wood into the fire
I plan on making a little device that will do so every 60 seconds. Nothing annoying but still audible if you are sitting
next to the stove. I mean with all the distractions in camp when cooking meals, looking at the view, eating, talking with your friends, I found during the last hike it was very easy to let the fire get down to just coals. A tiny beep or tone would be
a nice reminder to toss a few more sticks into the Biolite.

[NGshooter17]

I will probably end up getting one just to satisfy my curiosity.

[mark9atq]

Difficult to describe how the Biolite stove is so different from any other heat source I've used when out camping.

In a few minutes you can collect an arm load of sticks no thicker than pencils and cook dinner, boil water for drinking, boil more water for washing stuff, toss more sticks in just to watch the flames for a bit before zipping up the sleeping bag and in the morning do the same for breakfast, and when you pack up to leave half the sticks gathered the day before will still be unburned.

A regular camp fire would have consumed that arm load in just a few minutes as kindling to get bigger pieces burning.
So that's one big difference. A pound or two of sticks could be collected on the way to a high camp above timberline if there was a ridge to cross over or a mountain to climb and melting snow for hot meals would be simple and effective.

Without chairs and a table the stove will sit on the ground and so will you to feed sticks into it and having
a piece of plastic and/or a foam sit pad to keep your butt from soaking up ground water is very important.

A cooking pot with a regular bucket hoop handle is better than one with those side fold out handles. Wind direction constantly changes and the side handles can get hot and burn your hand. Bending the hoop handle to give it a lot of
friction to make it stand up straight and not flop over to get hot in the flames is a good idea.

[mark9atq]

Ok ...a bit more info as the learning curve for my Biolite stove wanders hopefully upwards. Some of your hiking partners may have bought very expensive and very small titanium metal ultra-lite cook pots of 4inches diameter or less - which would snuff out the Biolite stove opening - ie seal it shut- or just fall down into the fire chamber--- and are disappointed.

---this simple 'DIY' modification for making an ultra-lite fire grate to allow the use of any small cooking pot with the Biolite Camp Stove. Seems lots of variations to this rather obvious idea can be made on the fly with, for example, metal tent stakes
or a spare fork.

Its basically a piece of wire bent into a vee to act as a pot support placed on top of the Biolite to support small size cook pots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KQgV4lc_E&feature=plcp

[zombiepreparation]

Finally purchased one. Have opened it. Have taken it out of box to show a friend. Have not used it yet.

[GSHX2]

I am so "on the fence" with this. I finally can afford to bring my gear out of the dark ages of a wool blanket and a tarp... I am going to wait until spring and just run what I've got for now.

[mark9atq]

The Biolite guys have set up tables with their stoves and are charging New Yorkers cell phones today
I imagine there are a lot of people without power who would like to have one right now -post Sandy.
Good PR

[ineffableone]

The Biolite guys have set up tables with their stoves and are charging New Yorkers cell phones today
I imagine there are a lot of people without power who would like to have one right now -post Sandy.
Good PR

Definitely a good PR time for a stove like this, though folks in NYC would need to be careful and not use one of these inside their apt.

I imagine there will be a lot of new preppers after this storm, The East coast just got a big wake up call.

[mark9atq]

Interested in what the stoves designers think is the optimum size of wood pieces for feeding the Biolite? Here's a pic of the fuel the Biolite engineers brought along to run their stoves at a cell phone charging station in post Hurricane Sandy New York.

Dimensions look about 2inches long and 0.5 inch thick split hardwood. I'm sure that with a hand saw and a knife for baton-ing anyone could reproduce their effort.


http://t.co/2Nu6juH5

edit -NYT story on Biolite Nov 6 2012

...It was going really well until the cops showed up
and we packed up and made our way back,” Ms. Rosen said.
“I can sympathize with them — we’re in a disaster emergency, and here come
a group of people with literally a table that’s on fire.”

story
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/201 ... ite-stove/

[mark9atq]

The Biolite guys were on Mad Money with Cramer for a demo of the stove. ( 7min video out in a rainy parking lot )
Cramer apologizes that while Biolite is a privately held company explains why the heck he has them on his type of stock buying show.

Said to start selling 'em in outdoor gear stores starting next year in the US.

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=30 ... giOiIifQ==

[SOWMAS]

I have one and have used it. I am in the process of writing a review but it's incomplete as I have some questions about the stove that can only be answered by the company that makes them. I've emailed them twice but have not gotten a response yet.

[moab]

I got one of these from a friend as a gift. It just seems way to heavy to be practical in my pack. And you can't get it wet(?!). I think I'll stick with a wood gas stove and solar panels for charging my AA's that everything runs off of.

Might be good for a bug in though. Pretty handy to be able to fire up your phone with some sticks. Otherwise just to heavy for my light weight needs.

To be fair I'm biased though. Check out my sigline.

[moab]

I have one and have used it. I am in the process of writing a review but it's incomplete as I have some questions about the stove that can only be answered by the company that makes them. I've emailed them twice but have not gotten a response yet.

What's your overall impression thus far?