Charging My Devices with a Spare Solar Panel
The Setup
As shown in the picture below, this setup intends to charge regular mobile devices.
I currently have the following:
- A solar panel rated at just over 5W (5v 1A)
- A solar panel battery bank with 7200 mAh capacity
- A regular battery bank with 1850 mAh capacity
- A spare computer front-panel interface board
- A really old computer case
Every morning I get up and connect all the wires and make sure it is producing a current and leave it to run while I'm at school and usually it charges all the way up when I get back. The smaller bank takes about 4 hours to charge whereas the bigger power bank takes a whole day.
With the power I collect in the battery banks, I use it to charge my tablet so I don't have to rely on household adapters and mains power. So you could call this my solar powered tablet! (I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2)
Another fun thing is that while my tablet charges, I run some distributed computing projects via BOINC, specifically rosetta@home which folds proteins to help do stuff like identify new drugs to battle cancer or investigate the behaviour of a particular molecular combination. So it is a totally renewable human race helping machine!
Some Small Problems
A hassle to maintain
Provided that I have to do some work to get this thing working, sometimes I don't have time to set it up in the morning which makes me miss out on possible opportunities to collect some solar power.Not Waterproof
The current setup provides zero protection against the elements and requires me to keep it covered at all times that it is not working and quickly run out and disconnect it if it happens to start raining during the day (which I might not be able to do 24/7)Effects of the Other Elements
I've noticed over the recent windy days over here in Australia that the solar panel gets blown over and as you could probably guess, stops charging the battery banks. So I guess I need to find a sturdier solution.Heat
Don't even mention the heat here in Australia, we live in 40C heat for the majority of summer. As a result, I have to anticipate how to handle the increase in heat which is not healthy for those Lithium Polymer batteries. Solar powered fans maybe?
First Upgrades
It's small progress, but we are getting there...
Over the weekend I had a friend over and we soldered up the joints and connections on the solar panel while also adding some GPIO pin connectors I had lying around.
To partially solve the waterproofing problem, I added some blu-tack to the connectors and solder joints as shown.
Now it makes it way more easy to get set in the morning.
Next Steps
I was thinking to use the rest of the computer case shown.
With the gratings on the side there, I can feed-in the wires and create a little housing in the shell so it's protected from the rain. Then I think I'll plaster up the grating somehow to create a totally waterproof container.
The end product should be a little box with a USB port on it so I can just plug it and leave it.
I lol'd at finding a solar panel under your bed … the source of all things ancient and mysterious.
I'm terrified about what else could be lurking under the bed! ;-)
You just planted 0.03 tree(s)!
Thanks to @rufusfirefly
We have planted already 3294.06 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 24447.18
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
If you want the full story, under my bed I actually found my old box of electronics which I had when I was twelve and making circuits in my spare time. There were a few other solar panels too but this was the only one rated for mobile device charging. I also found a ton of resistors and other electronic scrap which gave me a bit of nostalgia.
I love the fact that you have utilized old equipment for this project.
You can buy solar charging power banks that can be used use to run mobile devices but reuse of existing equipment has that little extra measure of environmentally responsibility.
Definitely, idle hardware really itches at my OCD so I wanna do what I can. Along with this panel there were a few others but they weren't rated at the same voltage so I will have to look into how I can get them to become uniform and provide me with reliable power.
If your other solar panels are 12V then you might be able to use a USB car-charger.
You should check the maximum voltage the cell provides because Photo Voltaic cell voltages can vary quite a lot from the nominal voltage.
If the cell maximum voltage is above 15V then I would suggest using a solar charging regulator between the PV cell and any car equipment.
That's a nice little project. It has all the good things that make it cool: solar, Recycling and Boinc^^
Congratulations @delta1512! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPDo not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
SteemitBoard and the Veterans on Steemit - The First Community Badge.
God block chain technology is gonna changet the world