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Just sharing this for fun... Here is my first green JeeNode :-)
The solar panel is a panel used for loading cell phones (5V) with a 2800mAh battery/accu pack. It sits nice and silently in my window-sill... I hope it lasts over night (just installed it..)
Neat!
Very neat, now if only they would create smaller solar panels!
How long will it last? Well it really depends what you are asking it to do, but 2800mAh is quite a lot of capacity, especially on these short summer night (assuming you're in the Northern hemisphere) so I have little doubt it will make it through.
I use a Jeenode with occasional RF transmission and an LCD display, and even with the display backlight on it still draws <100mA, so it would easily do 28 hours on your battery in the dark.
Yes precisely. There are similar module with selectable output. I had one for mobile phones which was doing 3.7V, 5V and other few levels. It will be good to find one with 3.3V directly. :-)
It lasted over night :-) Voltage stays stable.. I'll report back in about a week :-)
Here's another interesting application node about solar-charging LiPo's. From [another thread](http://talk.jeelabs.net/topic/11).
I was going to try something much simpler. I think it was mentioned in Elektor at some point. Put a 4.5V solar cell and a MOSFET in parallel, feeding a LiPo battery through a diode. Make sure max solar current doesn't exceed LiPo 1C specs. Use a voltage divider to measure current Solar / LiPo voltage, and simply turn the MOSFET on whenever 4.2V + diode-foward-V is reached. Solar cells have no problem with being shorted out, as I understand it, so that would cover over-voltage protection.
For under-voltage, the ATmega should probably shut itself off at 3.0 .. 3.1 V or so, to avoid damage to the LiPo. Maybe even go into a special mode, to try and get the charge back up when there is enough sunlight.
The Texas TPS61201 looks ideal for this. I can just imagine a Solar LiPo JeeNode with one of them on board.
http://www.analogzone.com/grnp040207.htm
http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/slva345a/slva345a.pdf
Hi, how is your Solar powe going. I am looking at running a JeeNode, receiving data from an Aurora Solar PV Inverter (on our scout hall) and displaying the data on either a LCD or 7 segment LCD displays.
What was the spec/make & model of your solar panel / phone charger ?
Thanks
Richard
@billericayboy - Small world - waves from Brentwood
BTW, you have a couple of broken images on your web page about the solar power :-(