Possibility to solar power the keyboard

simoneruffini / ErgoDox

ErgoDox Mechanical Keyboard pcb & acrylic case

https://www.ergodox.io

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Possibility to solar power the keyboard #3

Open bonnee opened 4 years ago

bonnee commented 4 years ago

Since the low power nature of the project, it's possible to include solar panels to charge the on-board battery. Space seems not to be an issue on the ErgoDox. Only thing to take in account is complexity and cost. Solar cells are not that expensive on aliexpress and can provide more than enough current to keep the keeb on. But is it worth it?

simoneruffini commented 4 years ago

As of this build, the creator states that on normal conditions a 30 by 53 mm solar panel outputs 30mA. So theoretically this could be possible if for example the choose microcontroller is an nrfMicro, that rouglhy uses 0.2mAh on average. Nonetheless even if the board will be not completely solar powered this feature could be used to recharge the battery of the board during idle times.