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hamishcunningham / pi-tronics

Source code for Raspberry Pi GATE projects.
http://pi.gate.ac.uk/
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Using solar panel as power source #98

Closed ronisegoly closed 7 years ago

ronisegoly commented 7 years ago

I need to understand the usage of solar panel, if I combine battery and solar panel will it use solar power when available to save battery?

hamishcunningham commented 7 years ago

Solar panel outputs are infinitely variable :-)

Assuming that you have one with an output voltage regulator integrated that supplies >~7V and less than ~20V then MoPi will choose the supply which has a higher voltage at any given time. So e.g. if you're running from a 12V battery, whenever the solar panel output is greater than 12V then MoPi will use it.

Note that if the panel chucks out a high voltage (which we have seen happen in practice) it will fry your Pi!

HTH, H

ronisegoly commented 7 years ago

I ran the board today with solar panel and battery. The RPI logs every 5 minutes to excel on Google drive, so I can see both outputs and which one is active Indeed the MOPI choose the source with higher voltage, so even if the panel can still act as power source, if battery is fully charged it will switch to battery I was hoping it will use solar whenever is is available