The Solare project is a family of solar lithium battery charger boards. Currently the line up consists of two chargers, one based on the BQ24210 and the other BQ25504. Both boards are essentially breakouts/evaluation kits for the battery charge ICs but they are meant to be used in projects but can also be used for evaluation purposes.
Components
1×
BQ24210
Power Management ICs / Battery Management ICs
1×
BQ25504
Evaluation, Demonstration Kits, Boards and Modules / Evaluation Kits, Boards and Modules
So today, I received PCBs from OSHPark, wonderful quality as usual. I will be assembling one board this week to test using leftover SunLeaf components. Here are the boards:
After I assemble the board, the plan is to attempt to charge a lithium battery with a solar panel in the sun. To test I'm going to measure the charge on the battery before starting and measure it multiple times throughout the day. Stay tuned for more to follow.
So yesterday evening I banged out the schematic and PCB for the BQ24210 of the Solare boards. After spending the day doing other designs I came back to it and reworked it significantly. I feel the newly revised design is superior to my initial pass. I got it ready for fab correcting DRC error and got it out to @oshpark as a 2 layer board, should be here in not too long.
OSHPark Board Renders:
Top:
Bottom:
KiCAD 3D:
stay tuned, I'm working on the BQ25504 version next!!!
Fascinating. So how do I use this thing? Where does the solar panel go, and what are all those other terminals for? How many cells will it do? (solar/LiPo) Current?
Fascinating. So how do I use this thing? Where does the solar panel go, and what are all those other terminals for? How many cells will it do? (solar/LiPo) Current?