As I mentioned on here, we are going to be stewarding at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June and will be camping for 4 or 5 nights.
My 2 stepsons are coming along (costing us everything we saved on our own tickets - and we get to work for it!) and between us we have half a dozen devices that will need charging.

Apart from a full-size leisure battery set-up, which is quite costly, seems like overkill and will take up a fair bit of space in the car, what are the best options for charging phones/tablets without draining the car battery?

What about a solar charger that would recharge your car battery which could be used to charge the devices.

Or, a technology free few days when the batteries go flat!

Jim, you can get those foldable solar panels for that very purpose. Lidl are selling one on the 19th.....

Thanks chaps. I've never found the solar energy chargers to be much good, especially for several devices, with UK weather and mainly at night. But I'll have a closer look in case they have a battery store.

We have to have working phones for the job, Possum. Plus keeping in touch with offspring.

I was thinking of something like this:

Multi-function power pack

One of these will fit in your glove box but don't know if the capacity is sufficient for your needs.

Do you have spare car battery? Charge it before you go and just connect some sockets to it for the 12/5v adapters?

I don't have a spare, so it probably makes more sense to get one of these multi-function jobs. They mostly have a compressor and pump too, which might be useful (if it works...)

Yep, they are nice to have. I was just trying to avoid you an unnecessary purchase. Being a Jaguar owner, so having battery paranoia, we have ended up with 3 spare batteries, that is why it came to mind. I guess not everyone collects car batteries Borrow the one from the other car?

Battery compressors do work for topping up tyres, but mine is slow and terrifyingly noisy. I just use a foot pump.

I've always found small compressor pump things to be (as you say) noisy and all but useless. But that would definitely be a secondary benefit, not the main one!
I could take the battery out of the coupe, but I'm not sure it's a great idea... I'd have to buy all the 12V kit to stick on it for charging as well, so it seems a bit of a chore. But you are right that it would be cheaper.

Manage without for a weekend?

Well you would need the connectors and wires to safely fit some 12v sockets. Do your phones have easily exchanged batteries? I guess that would be too easy

Jim - if you want to borrow the power pack I have for racing which has a 12v "lighter" socket, you're more than welcome.

That could be great Richard; it's basically what I'm looking for.

Steve - we can't manage without; we have to have phones for the stewarding and for the kids their phones are their cameras and, more broadly, how their generation experiences things, with Snapchat, Instagram, etc. It might not be how we would do it, but keeping them entertained for 5 days, especially after the FoS closes, will be easier if they have their devices.

Cool - let's arrange nearer the time. I have a couple of things you can use.

Get a generator from ALDI.

Jim - I owe you a favour from many years ago - on the afternoon of Monday 20th June, I will be coming back into Folkestone on the way back from LeMans with my two lads (2:30pm tunnel crossing IIRC). I have purchased a 700W generator to power our own collection of chargers, devices and lights while we're there.

You are welcome to borrow it - you'll just need intercept us on our route back from Folestone to the West Midlands and get it back to me somehow after you've finished with it.

Its brand-new and not even run-in yet. Its relatively light-load, so you won't be able to run a three-bar fire off it, but it should be enough for charging devices - Its not designed to be run for extended periods, but it'll happily run for 2-3 hours at a time on a single (small) tank of fuel - we expect a 1-gallon jerry can will be more than enough for the five days at LeMans on the basis of 2-3 hours a night (we'll also charge a car battery to run 12v lights when the genny isn't running)

Let me know if it helps

I have one of the earlier versions of this
https://www.amazon.co.uk/EasyAcc-Monster...eywords=easyacc
fully charge an iPhone 8 - 10 times

Nigel, that is a very kind offer; I hadn't really thought about the generator idea, as it wouldn't really make sense to buy one, but it might be very useful. I'm not sure we're allowed generators in the staff camping, either, but I'll check and get back to you...