Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible
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I think I found a major flaw in the design: if the supercap voltage drops below 0.8V the booster is not able to work properly and instead of shutting off it starts drawing current until the supercap is empty. I did some startup tests at 0.8V and I saw current up to 140mA, much more than the solar panel can provide. I would need to reach around 1V on the supercap in order to have a safe margin to have a complete startup cycle. At this time of the year the daylight is getting shorter every day and clouds are making even more difficult to get a proper charge. I haven't done many changes so far because I wanted to see how it behaved in the worst conditions that we get during winter. Now the next steps are: adding some code to make sleep time increase as the supercap voltage decreases and making a board with the 3 supercaps I have in order to avoid as much as possible the voltage to drop below the 0.8V.
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Three supercaps? Sounds like you're leaving the zone of "as cheap as possible." I'd also be leary of a solar design where falling below "x" voltage leaves the system in a state it can't recover from without human intervention. Murphy's Law. Stuff happens.
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Well, I said 3 because I have 3 and I paid 3.35€ for 2, so it is not that expensive. The problem is that I would need to add something that would wait for the voltage to reach 1V after it has dropped below 0.8V before giving power to the booster: that is where a charge controller may come handy. Unfortunately I have no sufficient knowledge on how to solve this problem, so for now the code and 3 supercaps would have to do :D
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Well, I said 3 because I have 3 and I paid 3.35€ for 2, so it is not that expensive. The problem is that I would need to add something that would wait for the voltage to reach 1V after it has dropped below 0.8V before giving power to the booster: that is where a charge controller may come handy. Unfortunately I have no sufficient knowledge on how to solve this problem, so for now the code and 3 supercaps would have to do :D
@gohan You can solve that using a voltage detector. 0.2v hysteresis would not be uncommon. So, it would cut the current to your boost converter when the voltage drops below 0.8v, and it wouldn't allow it to come back on again until your supercap voltage reaches 1.0v.
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They're commonly used in brownout detectors and also circuits that do automatic resets if the voltage drops below a particular threshold. Not sure whether Aliexpress has premade circuits you can just buy, which seems to be your preference. Maybe. I haven't looked for that.
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@gohan said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
do you have an example I could take a look? I never used them
I'm just remembering now that I used a voltage detector in this project, where in the comments I gave you a detailed walk-thru explanation for how it worked:
https://www.openhardware.io/view/396/Simple-Solar-Supercap-Charger#tabs-instructions
The design files include a schematic. -
I believe I found another problem: the discharge I am seeing in the supercaps, I am suspecting it is due to the self discharge as it is not affected by the sleep time and the adding of the second supercapacitor.
As usual the Chinese stuff it is just worth the money you pay for it. -
I believe I found another problem: the discharge I am seeing in the supercaps, I am suspecting it is due to the self discharge as it is not affected by the sleep time and the adding of the second supercapacitor.
As usual the Chinese stuff it is just worth the money you pay for it. -
Looking at how quickly the voltage drops over time, I'm seeing no big difference between sending data every 10/30/60 minutes and even adding a second supercapacitor so I'm assuming they are just junk
I'm seriously considering ditching the supercaps and go with a LiFePo4 battery and leaving just the mcp1700 to keep the battery at 3.3v -
Looking at how quickly the voltage drops over time, I'm seeing no big difference between sending data every 10/30/60 minutes and even adding a second supercapacitor so I'm assuming they are just junk
I'm seriously considering ditching the supercaps and go with a LiFePo4 battery and leaving just the mcp1700 to keep the battery at 3.3v -
Do you have any suggestion on something of decent quality and not too high price? I mean something of at least 100F but that doesn't cost like 10$
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Well it probably doesn't need that much, but I plan to add more sensors and I need to compensate for the winter days when it's cloudy and the daylight is shorter. Of course I could expose the solar panel to direct sunlight to optimize the charging but it would be exposed to harsher weather conditions and the sun will cause the temperature reading to be higher.
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Do you have any suggestion on something of decent quality and not too high price? I mean something of at least 100F but that doesn't cost like 10$
@gohan said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
Do you have any suggestion on something of decent quality and not too high price? I mean something of at least 100F but that doesn't cost like 10$
AVX is a good brand. At least worth a shot to test your idea. If it doesn't meet your expectations, then it's not the supercap's fault. If it turns out to be overkill, you can downgrade from there. Or just start with the higheswt capacity AVX supercap that you think is affordable and make your give-up decision after first testing with that.
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@gohan do you really need 100F? How much energy does your node consume? Maybe it is easier to get the energy consumption down than to find a cheap huge capacitor wih low self-discharge?
@mfalkvidd said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
@gohan do you really need 100F? How much energy does your node consume? Maybe it is easier to get the energy consumption down than to find a cheap huge capacitor wih low self-discharge?
I agree, but I think he just wants to quickly test his proof-of-concept first without thinking about it too hard. Kinda a first-fit rather than best-fit search pattern. We've all done it, I'm sure.
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@gohan said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
Do you have any suggestion on something of decent quality and not too high price? I mean something of at least 100F but that doesn't cost like 10$
AVX is a good brand. At least worth a shot to test your idea. If it doesn't meet your expectations, then it's not the supercap's fault. If it turns out to be overkill, you can downgrade from there. Or just start with the higheswt capacity AVX supercap that you think is affordable and make your give-up decision after first testing with that.
@neverdie 8$ it is not bad but still 6x the initial price I was thinking. Also 8$ is the cost of 3 or 4 LiFePo4 AA batteries that are less temperature sensitive than lipo but can still hold a lot more energy than a supercapacitor and have the right 3.3v working voltage avoiding the need for a voltage regulator/booster . I'll think about it
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@gohan said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
Do you have any suggestion on something of decent quality and not too high price? I mean something of at least 100F but that doesn't cost like 10$
AVX is a good brand. At least worth a shot to test your idea. If it doesn't meet your expectations, then it's not the supercap's fault. If it turns out to be overkill, you can downgrade from there. Or just start with the higheswt capacity AVX supercap that you think is affordable and make your give-up decision after first testing with that.
@neverdie said in Supercap Solar Powered Mysensors nodes as cheap as possible:
Or just start with the highest capacity AVX supercap that you think is affordable
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I always like to stay on the safe side and plan ahead. Now I need to find out quickly if the solar panel is actually able to provide enough power to keep the node running even with short daylight ( I am thinking about using the LiFePO4 battery charged at 3.1V and see if it can reach the 3.3V or if it drops below 3V); meanwhile I'll try to do a runtime test on the supercaps and try to see how long I can power a node without sleep and make an estimate for a target capacity of a good quality supercap
