I'm currently working on a road test of an ADI Energy Harvesting Eval board kit. I was experiencing a lot of intermittent readings from the PV cells and I noticed that they are mounted with what I believe to be conductive epoxy and that it was cracked all along one end. Not sure why they used conductive epoxy - maybe the contacts aren't solderable.
The good news is that Randall was able to get me a replacement board quickly (I mentioned it to him Saturday and had a replacement on Wednesday - amazing!! ) .
This board is using Alta GaAs PV cells which are somewhat unique, so I thought that I'd ask if and how experienced users would repair this board. I have no experience with conductive epoxy and it seems expensive to just try if you don't know what you're doing. The material seems pretty conductive just probing the surface, so maybe just adding more epoxy along the surface would work? Any recommendations for what brand to use? I've seen single use stuff on Amazon that costs about $20 which is probably more than this board costs.
On a related note, does anyone know what happened to Alta? They were acquired by Hanergy in 2013 and sounds like the US office might have been shut down in 2019. Haven't been able to find specs on the cells used on this board. It's possible they were only produced for demonstration purposes. Randall is checking with his ADI contact.
TIA
Ralph