Has anyone ever tried this? How did it work?

Total failure. You can replace a small portion of the charge during the day, but no way to keep up with the demand overnight. You would need at least 3 battery packs, and rotate them while others charge.
Bill

It should work well enough, but is not something I would rely on- weather can interfere.

The way a friend of mine did it was actually the right way- figured out what the currrnt need was to recharge the battery and brought enough of the deployable solar panels to get the requisite charge in his batteries. He did make some assumptions like at least 8 hours of usable daylight and assumed some efficiency loss… but he is an electrical engineer.

I wouldn’t get the stuff they sell for charging a cell phone to do it.

I have not seen anything with a built in solar cell for this.

I haven’t had any problems as long as I don’t run any type of humidifier. I can go two nights with a fully charged battery. You just need big enough solar to charge and that’s the biggest problem. If you’re in camp that runs off solar during the day but doesn’t really have power at night because their battery backup sucks, that should provide plenty of charge for you. If you’re having to take your own panels, make sure to buy the largest you can fold up and fit into your suitcase and hope you can keep the battery cool enough at the same time you’re charging the battery.