I’m delighted to tell you that my MPPT Solar Charger has been nominated for this year’s Hackaday Prize Finals taking place on October 22nd. I’ve submitted it in the Power Harvesting Challenge (link no longer available) category a while ago and was just informed that it was picked as one out of twenty projects submitted to the finals. Check out the original article here. Of course, any support is highly appreciated.
It’s time to follow up on the MPPT Solar Charger project. Progress has been slow since I’m currently working full time and doing a master’s degree at the same time. Given that this blog has previously been something close to a 50% job at times things will necessarily slow down a bit. But all the projects, including this one and the ultrasonic anemometer are alive and well and I’m working on them whenever I find some time.
I’m currently waiting for the boards for my Ultrasonic Anemometer Rev B to arrive from Hong Kong and this gives me some time to write about the MPPT Solar Charger design that I did quite some time ago. I published a series of posts on a Arduino MPPT Solar Charger Shield and got a lot of encouraging feedback. But that shield was more of a proof-of-concept than a finished product. While it generally performed well it drew way too much current when idle to actually be deployed unless you can count on plenty of sunshine every day.
First tests are being performed on the Solar Charger Shield In my last post I’ve introduced a proof-of-concept Arduino solar charger shield. I went through the hardware as well as the way it works - or at least is intended to work. It was prominently linked on dangerousprototypes.com as well as some other sites and got quite a bit of publicity as a result. Thank you all for sharing this post.
A friend has approached me regarding his solar project. He wants to install a solar panel together with a battery and an inverter in order to have power at his allotment garden. He had looked at a hobbyist project where an arduino was used to build a MPPT (maximum point of power tracking) charge controller. I took a look at the design, liked a lot of what I saw and decided to build something similar.
