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Hackaday Prize Finals

A project log for High Efficiency MPPT Solar Charger

A 75 watt MPPT Solar Charger with tons of features. Efficiency > 97%, USB interface, data logging, 2 USB charging ports and much more...

lukas-fsslerLukas Fässler 07/26/2018 at 20:550 Comments

I'm delighted to tell you that this project has been selected to run in the Hackaday Prize Finals on October 22nd. The last week I've been working on this project day and night. And I mean that quite literally: I was still soldering some more boards at 1:30 a.m. when the email with the happy news arrived.

There are three things I'm currently working on: 

  1. Getting some more chargers out into the field in order to get some feedback from real-world use. That's why I'm busy soldering. One charger is now constantly deployed at my home and another one is on its way to Norway. At least two more will go to Croatia where Valent is working with some schools that run them for educational purposes and experiment with different algorithms.
  2. Finalizing the bootloader. I've spent many hours cleaning up the code and extending the API. The goal is to have a universal USB / SPI / I2C bootloader. It turned out to be a lot of work but I'm getting there.
  3. Posting some videos: I'm not really up to speed when it comes to cutting videos I had to notice. I've recorded quite a few videos from outdoor testing, the bootloader in action as well as soldering. But I still have to cut and edit them somehow before they go on youtube.

I'll be on vacation for the next 2 weeks but after having been selected for the finals I'm more motivated than ever to finalize this project.

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