After a lot of revisions, changes, corrections and doubting, I finally decided to commit to a first board production. We will see if this comes out good. The design is still untested. Just reporting on the progress (which is glacially slow).
@NeverDie said in The Harvester: ultimate power supply for the Raybeacon DK:
@Mishka said in The Harvester: ultimate power supply for the Raybeacon DK:
@NeverDie Cutting panels should just work. I'm unsure how do you attach wires to it though. I'll be grateful if you will share your findings.
Closing the loop on your question, it looks as though they can be cut:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/0-5W-0-5V-High-Efficiency-Back-Contact-DIY-1-6-Cut-Sunpower-Solar-Cell-36pcs-lot/291858971298?hash=item43f4267aa2:g:hsAAAOSwxp9W5tui
I've read that cutting them with a laser is the recommended method. I only just came across this, and I haven't yet found a vendor selling just one solarpower solar cell lasercut into six pieces like that yet, although the above ebay auction demonstrates that you can buy them in bulk that way.
Closing the loop even further, I received one of these 50 watt panels:
As you might be able to guess from the photo, and I'm able to confirm because I can see it up close, every single solar cell was cut in half prior to assembly. It looks as though Sunpower then used some kind of conductive tape (?) to make the electrical connections from one cell to the next. Or perhaps a flex cable of some kind? Then the whole layout was sent through a laminator. Seems as though it would be very efficient to manufacture. I'm impressed that 50 watts can be produced by such a relatively small assemblage. Hopefully Sunpower picked materials that won't yellow or brown with sun exposure and time! If so, then this might be better than most of what is commercially available, let alone the solar cell encapsulations from aliexpress that last only a few months in direct sunlight before they become so opaque as to be unuseable.
0.5W 0.5V High Efficiency Back Contact DIY 1/6 Cut Sunpower Solar Cell 36pcs/lot
$108.00
45 available
Sorry, one more mistake. On the board, the UART port connector rotates on 180 degrees. In this case, UART on the Orange PI Zero and UART on the board should be connected with wires.
RFM69 and Ethernet shield share SPI bus, each one with its own CS line. Ethernet shield uses pin 10 so JP1 should use pin 6 for the radio. Issues sharing SPI bus seems to be due to bad SEN line handling as described here. The official Arduino ethernet shield suffered from this, but most commonly used clones work ok. Shields including 74LVC14 as in the pic should work ok.
Thanks for the great design. I wonder if you could edit the design for new Hi-link 5V products (5V 5W HLK-5M05, 5V 10W HLK-10M05L, and 5V 20W HLK-20M05). They are very similar but different in size. Thank you.
