Stupid Garage Grown Project 1 Part 1: Solar Powered Mini Mining Rig For $0 Investment

My two fellow mad scientists are away in college, one a materials chemistry major and the other a computer science major and I'm left behind bored with a garage full of electronics and no one to build with boo hoo.

As a result, here is part 1 of a little project today while the wife was out shopping, a solar powered mining android tablet.

I started out by assessing a couple of our cabinets for a project idea I could start quickly.

pwr cords bin

When I spotted a couple of our old broken android tablets sitting there doing nothing I decided a little solar mining project would be quick and easy for part 1.

I chose a least old android tablet, a 2-3 year old Lenova brand 4 Core/4 Thread. Also from the garage everything else I needed was "in stock":

1 12 volt 5 watt solar panel

1 12 volt 2 watt solar panel

1 cigarette lighter usb power adapter

1 cigarette lighter socket with leads, in this case clips

1 watt meter and power analyzer

1 12 volt 38 amp lead acid battery in an environment housing

And here we go: Step 1: Fire up the cracked tablet and load an android miner program on it. I prefer miner pro but for this trial I'm installing and using Minergate app. mining for Monero. Here's a crappy picture of the app running fine on the tablet:

Step 2: I wanted to measure the wattage draw by feeding the laptop which had a depleted battery in it from the 12 volt 5 watt solar panel thru my watt draw meter and into the USB power adapter.

So it's pulling around 1.3 watts with the screen off of course and no other apps running other than Minergate at 4 threads and Wifi turned on and connected. Even though it's only pulling 1.3 watts I'm concerned that my 5 watt solar panel will not be enough. The solar panel will produce up to 5 watts during the peak sun time of day and only when angled properly for it. Most of the day it will be producing less that 5 watts to run and recharge the 12 volt 38 amp battery. As a result, I can tackle this a few different ways from my garage stock.

 1) Deploy a couple of sun mirrors angled to the panel forcing it into overclock if you will, been there done that before.

2) Add our Dewalt 18 volt drill converted into a wind generator as an additional form of charging power. That would    require a solar & wind controller board XXX not in stock.

3) Bring out a big gun panel, one of four 12 volt 120 watt panels parked in the garage.

4) Add a supplemental 12 volt 2 watt panel and see how it goes.

Here's some pics starting with the battery:

Backside with pad now placed out of the sun:

It's generating very very little but I didn't expect more from a pad we should have thrown out already. Perhaps I'll point it to mine on nicehash and double my payouts, lol.

Both solar panels have a diode built in to prevent current reversing when the sun goes down but this is only Part 1: Establishing the basic layout.

If there's enough interest I will post my part 2 to the project which will be weather proofing and introducing a controller board I have for handling the battery charging properly.

Have a great Sunday all!

@bluehorseshoe