Solar charger: Photon + Battery Shield + Battery + Solar panel

Hi!

I’m building a solar charger. Right now I have:

  1. Battery shield with a Photon (most of the time sleeping)
  2. 3.7V battery connected to the LiPo connector
  3. Solar panel connected to the VIN and GND pins

battery-barrel-solar

Now I want to charge an external device (5V), like a mobile phone. For this, I’m using a PowerBoost (Adafruit):

The PowerBoost is connected to VIN and GND pins. The idea is to convert the ~3.7V from VIN (battery powered) into 5V.

It works!

Here’s my diagram:

@pedromorfeu - great little setup. I had a similar set up (but with the Particle Battery Shield) and had a Particle living for a full year on the windowsill, without external power (so living off the day light, and with enough battery to survive the night).

I put it to sleep for most of the time, woke up every 15 minutes to take battery measurements, send to Thingspeak and then back to sleep. Worked a dream.

Enjoy and post further pics.

What is your set up doing, is it charging your phone or is the Photon running other clever code?

Neal.

Thanks! Well, the purposes are to charge devices out of solar power and, at the same time, power the Photon that is taking some measurements (soil moisture) from a small garden.

I’ll keep you posted.

Just got my iPod charged!

Hi Pedro, what solar panel are you using? thanks!

A pretty basic one: https://coolcomponents.co.uk/products/solar-panel-1-watt

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