08-05-2022, 04:55 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-05-2022, 05:06 AM by CounterPillow.)
Hi,
this is quite an ambitious and neat project. I've dabbled in solar for a bit before, so here's what I know:
You will need a suitable panel and an MPPT charger. I'd usually recommend the SparkFun Sunny Buddy as a starting point for microcontrollers, but sadly it's limited to 450 mA charge current, which is not enough for an SBC. But "MPPT" is definitely the keyword you want to look for. As for generation monitoring, I don't know which chips/modules provide that, but they'd probably provide it over I²C. An INA219 would be suitable for providing power consumption monitoring of the SBC. Just make sure the INA219 has a shunt resistor selected to be able to measure up to 3A, this might involve buying a new shunt resistor and soldering it in parallel.
Additionally you then want the load side to be regulated 5V for the SBC to have a stable input.
By the way, if this PiJuice Solar thing has a schematic/pinout somewhere, I can check whether it might just be compatible with the Quartz64 Model B. Looks like it might be, but would need some device tree massaging to get things to work since we don't have the plug&play EEPROM overlays, and the I²C on Pin 5 and 3 need to be activated.
this is quite an ambitious and neat project. I've dabbled in solar for a bit before, so here's what I know:
You will need a suitable panel and an MPPT charger. I'd usually recommend the SparkFun Sunny Buddy as a starting point for microcontrollers, but sadly it's limited to 450 mA charge current, which is not enough for an SBC. But "MPPT" is definitely the keyword you want to look for. As for generation monitoring, I don't know which chips/modules provide that, but they'd probably provide it over I²C. An INA219 would be suitable for providing power consumption monitoring of the SBC. Just make sure the INA219 has a shunt resistor selected to be able to measure up to 3A, this might involve buying a new shunt resistor and soldering it in parallel.
Additionally you then want the load side to be regulated 5V for the SBC to have a stable input.
By the way, if this PiJuice Solar thing has a schematic/pinout somewhere, I can check whether it might just be compatible with the Quartz64 Model B. Looks like it might be, but would need some device tree massaging to get things to work since we don't have the plug&play EEPROM overlays, and the I²C on Pin 5 and 3 need to be activated.
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