Project14 | Poll to Decide June 18' Competition

I've created a separate thread for my questions: https://www.element14.com/community/message/238701/l/dealing-with-low-battery#238701

can we keep the battery controller from providing any power at all until a minimum threshold is achieved?

Quite possibly as part of the the LiPo or an external charger, battery controller.

I'll have to do some looking later when I'm home ....

Mark

>devices reduced their reporting rate to suit the charge they had

You mean as in read battery level and adjust "next wake time" accordingly? That's an interesting feature, and would probably take care of most of it.

I was thinking much less dynamic - ie, plan for worst case and hard-code the sleep time accordingly. But it makes sense to make hay while the sun shines, or in this case send more updates while the sun is shining on the solar cell.

My more direct concern with 3 and 4 was more outside of the control of the microcontroller: can we keep the battery controller from providing any power at all until a minimum threshold is achieved? ie, if battery pack voltage drops to the minimum 3.2volts, shut off power to the microcontroller, and then don't provide power again until it's back up to, say, 3.4 volts. I suppose a very power-miser type controller could control that part (digispark maybe?). So the battery would need enough power to run the digispark, and the digispark would turn on a relay if it figures there's enough power to run the ESP8266. I'm pretty sure I've seen battery protection circuits out there that will avoid over-discharge that can shut off power to the digispark in those cases.

-Nico

I had totally forgotten about that, and it was only 6 months ago!

me too!.

I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around points 3 and 4.

For the Forget me Not challenge, the EnOcean devices reduced their reporting rate to suit the charge they had.

Maybe there is an ability to do something similar ?.

Mark

What I had in mind might be too specific.

I'm hoping to use solar for powering micro controller data logging/sensing projects.

Specifically, I have an ESP-8266 (like Adafruit's Huzzah) based project I'd like to run on solar. (the temperature logger I blogged about recently)

The challenges include:

1. charging a battery from the solar panel.

2. output of the battery has to provide 3.3v to power the board

3. battery should be sufficiently charged before it provides power to the board

4. battery should shut down the board (cut the power) when voltage goes too low

5. The micro controller should be super energy efficient - ie, sleep most of the time, wake up just long enough to do something, then sleep again.

I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around points 3 and 4.

Cheers,

-Nico

Hey ntewinkel ,

It's a good ideas and definitely would love to add it to the June choices as there seems to be a lot of interest in it.

Last time we had a couple of really great projects:

Building a Solar Charger by  shabaz

and

Tilt Solar Light by  carmelito

Just wondering if a similar theme or if there is another theme that might be more popular around solar power.

What do you think?

>Tariq said:

>We did one around Solar Powered Yard Gadget early on.

I had totally forgotten about that, and it was only 6 months ago!

Phooey on this 9-to-5 job that's keeping me from my fun hobby projects!

We did one around Solar Powered Yard Gadget early on.

Anything specific about solar energy that you think would make a good theme?

mcb1  wrote:

 

create a project that uses solar energy

Lets have one ... I have a project that keeps getting put aside and this might mean I actually do it.

 

Me too - that's the final step in making my remote wireless sensor completely remote and completely wireless

-Nico

create a project that uses solar energy

Lets have one ... I have a project that keeps getting put aside and this might mean I actually do it.

Mark