Powering electron with solar

Hardware
1

Hi

I plan to use a 6V Voltaic solar panel to keep my electron battery charged.

But I am a bit confused about the possible options and the advantages / disadvantages of each.

Option 1.
Connect the battery to USB Battery connection and the solar panel directly to the USB port.

[http://www.voltaicsystems.com/blog/building-solar-powered-cloud-connected-devices/]

i.e. Use the built in charger of the electron

Option 2
Use a separate USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger - (e.g. from Adafruit PRODUCT ID: 390).

[https://www.adafruit.com/product/390]

Option 3
Connect using LiPo/Vin pins.With without capacitor?

Any guidance would be welcome

Thanks

Kim

2

The best way to go is to just to connect the Voltaic panel to the Gnd and VIN+ pins so the panel will charge the battery when it sees sufficient sunlight. The PMIC chip will regulate the charging.

There is code on there for tweaking the charging settings for best solar charging performance.

You don’t need the extra external batteries and charge regulators for most situations which keeps the size down.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the input, but why use the Vin instead of the USB connection?

4

You can use the USB connection also, they both feed the PMIC the same way.

1 Like
5

Great, thanks so much for the quick response. I will use the USB and will incorporate the code for the solar charging.

Cheers

kim