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Resources for PiJuice HAT for Raspberry Pi - use your Pi Anywhere
https://uk.pi-supply.com/collections/pijuice/products/pijuice-portable-power-raspberry-pi
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Charging PiJuice with a 12V solar panel issues #941

Open mpourossell opened 1 year ago

mpourossell commented 1 year ago

Hi all,

I'm powering the PiJuice Zero using the 12000mAh battery from PiJuice from the J2 connector. To feed this battery I'm using a 30W 12V solar panel connected to a buck converter (~18V to 5.1V) to be able to connect it to the J4 pins, which accept from 4,2V to 10V input (so PiJuice does like a solar controller). According to my calculations, I would expect that a 30W panel was way enough powerful to power the system and keep battery levels stable though... With this setup, after 40-60 minutes both the INPUT and OUTPUT voltage from the buck converter get to 4,6V and ~0.5Amp (showing a WEAK input). After a few minutes then, the RPi turns off and stop working, although the PiJuice is still showing a blinking blue light as the battery is charging correctly. So I have to push the PiJuice botton to power the RPi again and everything is working again for 1h more...

image

PiJuice official panels are 5V and are connected to MicroUSB instead of J4 connectors, so I'm thinking that the problem might be somewhere in the stepping down process from the 12V solar panel to 5.1V, that might cut the Amperage somehow and doesn't provide sufficient current to both power the system and charge the battery (althought the blue light is meaning that battery is charging). Has anyone tried this out already? I didn't find any discussion about how to use 12V solar panels in PiJuice.

Solar panel: https://www.amazon.es/enjoysolar%C2%AE-monokristallin-M%C3%B3dulo-Autocaravana-Caravan/dp/B076B48ZSD/ref=asc_df_B076B48ZSD/?tag=googshopes-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=256107874451&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8438696717592638766&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=20270&hvtargid=pla-422195373745&psc=1

Buck converter: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B07DJ47HGZ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details (I tried before with smaller ones and were overheating so hard, so this big one doesn't)

Thanks in advance for your help!

xaja34 commented 1 year ago

Were you able to resolve the problem? I was hoping to use the same setup.

mpourossell commented 1 year ago

Using a thicker wire after the buck converter solved the issue! I was using current jumping wires 30awg from BC to the J4 connectors from PiJuice and the plastic end of the jumper wires was kind of melted after a few days. I soldered 20awg wires instead to the female termination of the jumper wire and that solved the problem.

It seems that the current entering to the J4 pins was overheating the wires and made them to lose the connection to the J4 pins after a few days, because of the melted wire. I've been using this system now for almost 1 month in the field and it's prefectly working!

I hope this was useful!