Blog - All Comments

RE: Building a Solar Charger

urkraft — Mon, 28 May 2018 17:05:15 GMT

Hi Shabaz,

Very interesting project, in my opinion. I had plans on exploring something of the same nature. Could be useful for many applications - for example for controlling an irrigation system in a remote garden without any electricity. Have you made any ny progress/developments with it since October last year?

- raymond

RE: Building a Solar Charger

ka_ru — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 07:08:50 GMT

Hi,

do you definitely want to always have a connected output divider to the battery?
Do you have two layer PCB? Are you sure that you do not need resistance in the line BTSR?

RE: Tilt Solar Light

dougw — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 07:04:05 GMT

Nifty idea and great execution.

RE: Building a Solar Charger

jw0752 — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 23:07:49 GMT

This is a good project and I am glad you are sharing your research with us. I see that they are commercially using a lot of the small panels for powering signs and other applications. I wonder if they ever have a failure of one of these panels. If one could contact the right people perhaps you could get a couple of failed ones and make a good one out of them. I suspect that they replace as opposed to repair.

John

RE: Building a Solar Charger

DAB — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 17:47:04 GMT

Nice project.

I can see several applications using your basic design.

DAB

RE: Tilt Solar Light

DAB — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 17:41:35 GMT

Nice simple design.

DAB

RE: Building a Solar Charger

mcb1 — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 22:31:24 GMT

I seem to recall you posted what the panel was, but I'm not sure where (and you add so much content the search engine would die [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-aa6ae619-d36f-475a-8994-3a08de3b416e/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16] )

I'm interested in what you've decided on, since I have several projects that could use a 10-20W panel, but sadly most are just way too expensive.

Most of the mainstream solar regulators are simply that, a limiting device to stop cooking the batteries, but having a device to convert the energy into the appropriate voltage is good for efficiency.

Looks like an interesting project ...

Mark

RE: Upcycled Wireless Sensor Accent Light, Part 2

DAB — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 18:29:41 GMT

Nice post.

One of the things I always wanted to know about solar cells was just how effective are they when charging batteries or supercaps.

I know about the Maximum Power Point and all of the fancy graphs, but what I really would like to know is just how efficient are they when charging batteries?

Just because you can pull 48mW of power out of a cell does not mean you can put 48mW into a battery.

Could be a fun exercise to run. As David Jones recently showed in one of his videos, there is a big difference between Power output and Energy output.

DAB

RE: Tilt Solar Light

jw0752 — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 03:46:27 GMT

Hi Carmelito,

This is a great concept and a nice build. Your cousin is going to be lucky to have such unique lights for his patio.

John

RE: Upcycled Wireless Sensor Accent Light, Part 1

DAB — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 19:34:59 GMT

Neat idea.

I will be following your posts and looking out for these devices at garage sales.

DAB