Powering mote 24/7 using only a supercap and solar
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I notice that the above test procedure is different than Maxwell's (they pre-charge the capacitor for only 24 hours rather than the 72 that Maxwell uses), so maybe the robotroom guy (referenced above) was right about there being a lack of standards after all.
What's a bit annoying about charts like Figure 15 above is that they seem to present the best case scenario, rather than the "typical" or worst case scenario. Usually specifiers want to know the worst case, so they can pick a component that will cover that case. I guess what these charts do allow you to do (maybe) is choose among the best of the available product lines to build prototypes, and then from there you run your own tests for the typical or worst case. Of course, if Maxwell feels the need to pre-charge their capacitors for 72 hours, presumably (?) the Maxwell capacitors do substantially worse with "just" a 24 hour pre-charge. Meh, making comparisons is a mess.
So, I think that for the comparison tests that I will be doing, it will be better to not pre-charge the capacitors at all. Instead, I'll start the discharge test the moment they reach a charge of 3.6v, which is the highest I expect I would be charging them to. That should give a better approximation of the worst case performance, which is what I want to know. Depending on the relative freshness of the capacitors, that might unfairly handicap some of them, but so be it.
Any comments on this approach?
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I notice that the above test procedure is different than Maxwell's (they pre-charge the capacitor for only 24 hours rather than the 72 that Maxwell uses), so maybe the robotroom guy (referenced above) was right about there being a lack of standards after all.
What's a bit annoying about charts like Figure 15 above is that they seem to present the best case scenario, rather than the "typical" or worst case scenario. Usually specifiers want to know the worst case, so they can pick a component that will cover that case. I guess what these charts do allow you to do (maybe) is choose among the best of the available product lines to build prototypes, and then from there you run your own tests for the typical or worst case. Of course, if Maxwell feels the need to pre-charge their capacitors for 72 hours, presumably (?) the Maxwell capacitors do substantially worse with "just" a 24 hour pre-charge. Meh, making comparisons is a mess.
So, I think that for the comparison tests that I will be doing, it will be better to not pre-charge the capacitors at all. Instead, I'll start the discharge test the moment they reach a charge of 3.6v, which is the highest I expect I would be charging them to. That should give a better approximation of the worst case performance, which is what I want to know. Depending on the relative freshness of the capacitors, that might unfairly handicap some of them, but so be it.
Any comments on this approach?
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Also, for solar, I think it will make sense to charge the super cap to a lower voltage, because then the boost converter is more efficient if the solar cell voltage is low. That may mean a higher Farad supercap.
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I've received the first traunch of capacitors from Digikey just now. I've decided to take a hybrid approach with respect to pre-charging. Since I don't want the voltage on the super cap to ever fall below 2.5v, I'm going to saturation charge it at that voltage. Then I'll see how much extra voltage the solar charge circuit can add to it in, say, 4 hours just from ambient room light in a room where the only source of light will be the ceiling light (so that the lux is controlled). Then, I'll either:
- Hook it up to a wireless mote and see how long it lasts until it drains to 2.5volts again, or
- watch the self-discharge on a scope again
Judging from the charge-up time of a 1F capacitor, I suspect 1F will be plenty. Ordinarily, more Farads would imply a higher self-discharge current, but in this solar charging scenario it will also mean that the accumulated voltage will stay closer to the saturated charge level, and so that might conceivably result in less self-discharge overall. I guess we'll see how it plays out.
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I've received the first traunch of capacitors from Digikey just now. I've decided to take a hybrid approach with respect to pre-charging. Since I don't want the voltage on the super cap to ever fall below 2.5v, I'm going to saturation charge it at that voltage. Then I'll see how much extra voltage the solar charge circuit can add to it in, say, 4 hours just from ambient room light in a room where the only source of light will be the ceiling light (so that the lux is controlled). Then, I'll either:
- Hook it up to a wireless mote and see how long it lasts until it drains to 2.5volts again, or
- watch the self-discharge on a scope again
Judging from the charge-up time of a 1F capacitor, I suspect 1F will be plenty. Ordinarily, more Farads would imply a higher self-discharge current, but in this solar charging scenario it will also mean that the accumulated voltage will stay closer to the saturated charge level, and so that might conceivably result in less self-discharge overall. I guess we'll see how it plays out.
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The Vishay supercaps have a test procedure for self discharge that at least sounds plausibly achievable by a solar charger under real world conditions. Basically you charge the supercap to its rated voltage for one hour. Then disconnect the supercap and store it at room temperature for 24 hours. Then measure the voltage. According to the datasheet, the measured voltage after the 24 hours should be at least 90% of the rated voltage it was charged to (cf. page 13 of http://www.vishay.com/docs/28409/196hvc.pdf).
I'll be doing that test shortly on the 15F Vishay Supercap, which is one of the supercaps I received today: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/vishay-bc-components/MAL219691203E3/4701PHBK-ND/5015885
One disadvantage to this Vishay supercap is that the ESR is 1.8 ohms, which is high enough to have an impact on the RFM69HW's voltage when it's tx'ing at full power. So, the supercaps that I ordered today from Digikey all have much lower ESR's. Having said that, I think there may be workarounds to the high ESR, though I'd prefer to keep things simple enough that workarounds won't be needed.
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@NeverDie if you eant to compare different caps, see if you can remove the solar panel from the equation. I think the variability of the solar panel voltage will make comparison difficult.
@mfalkvidd said:
@NeverDie if you eant to compare different caps, see if you can remove the solar panel from the equation. I think the variability of the solar panel voltage will make comparison difficult.
Yeah, I'm not quite ready to try supercap charging from the solar cell just yet. However, I'm not worried about variability: in the room where I'm testing, the solar cell would be illuminated by just the ceiling light, which is very constant in brightness, and nothing else.
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@mfalkvidd said:
@NeverDie if you eant to compare different caps, see if you can remove the solar panel from the equation. I think the variability of the solar panel voltage will make comparison difficult.
Yeah, I'm not quite ready to try supercap charging from the solar cell just yet. However, I'm not worried about variability: in the room where I'm testing, the solar cell would be illuminated by just the ceiling light, which is very constant in brightness, and nothing else.
At least so far the Vishay 15F supercap (see above) is holding up much better than the others. Today, the second day of testing on it, it's losing only about 5 millivolts per 12 hour period.
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I hooked up an ADS1220 24-bit ADC to the supercap so that I could see in near real-time whether the solar charger was charger was charging the supercap, or having little to no effect.
Bottom line: if the solar cell is in a room that is well lit, by either natural or artificial means, then the BQ25504 charge circuit will charge the supercap faster than ithe supercap self discharges. On the other hand, if the room is only dimly lit, then the BQ25504 charger does not seem to be charging the supercap in any meaningful way. So, if dim lighting is an important use case to consider, one might need a bigger solar cell of some kind.
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I notice now that leaving the BQ25504 connected to the supercap at night when there's no light to harvest does result is a cumulative drain of about 50 millivolts to the 15F supercap (charged to 3.340 volts) versus disconnecting it during the same period.
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I finished the LTC3501 energy harvester (https://www.openhardware.io/view/281/Solar-Energy-Harvester), but, disappointingly, its MPPC seems to be no match for the MPPT of the BQ25504 for the el cheapo solar cell.
I think the next step will be to modify the BQ25504 breakout board to include the supercap. Going forward that should keep everything neat and tidy and avoid loose wiring.
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I've designed the load switch and the supercap onto the PCB, and I just now sent it off to the fab. The entire board is less than 0.9 square inches in size.
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Another notion I'm toying with is a variation of the proverb "make hay while the sun is shining." In other words, squirrel away as much solar energy as possible when conditions are optimal, and not worry too much about extracting light under truly dim conditions. I think there's a happy medium to be found, and I hope that by playing around with it a bit I'll develop a better sense as to where that sweet spot is.
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Here's the version that I most recently assembled:
As you can see, the 15F supercap is now on the board itself. It works fine.I've since made a few refinements and have sent the new files off to be fabbed. The newest version of the PCB will measure roughly 22mm x 22mm.
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I'm very curious to know what kind of sensor you would be able to run with this project. Of course a lot will depends on the size of solar panel and how much light it will get.
@gohan
Early tests indicate the 15F charges to 3.6v pretty fast on even ambient light. I realize that's a somewhat vague statement, but I hope to eventually quantify it better (charge time as a function of lux level, panel size, and nominal panel voltage). Nonetheless, based on early preliminary measurements, I'm pretty confident the answer is going to be fairly simple, namely: what can you do with 15F of charge?Before I began this project, I was quite worried that self discharge would strongly govern the answer, but this particular supercap (as contrasted to others I tested) seems to have a relatively low rate of self discharge. Early tests show the same also holds true for its bigger brother, the 90F supercap, in case the 15F isn't enough. The 15F supercap is rated for 100,000 charge/discharge cycles, so it won't be wearing out anytime soon if it's operated indoors under normal ambient temperature conditions. There are probably even more interesting supercaps out there, but for me this one's an existence proof and a fixed point I can gather data around.
If anyone knows of even better supercaps to try, I'm all ears.
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Think of it like a battery whose voltage starts at 3.6v and then over time gradually drops to 1.8v. As presently configured, you would stop when the voltage gets to 1.8v, because both the atmega328p and the RFM69HW require a minimum 1.8v to operate.
