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SOL V3 Early Design

A project log for SOL: Long-term solar intensity sensing

SOL is a project to develop a solar powered, connected solar intensity sensor (also known as a pyranometer)

jake-wachlinJake Wachlin 11/03/2018 at 19:060 Comments

SOL V2 design documents and firmware have now been added to the project Github. 

As previously detailed, V2 has some design faults that need to be addressed. Further than that, some upgrades can be made to add functionality and ease setup. Programming was made easier by routing all the needed ESP32 pins to a pin header. The device is programmed with the Arduino IDE through a SparkFun FTDI Basic 3.3V, but it requires three pins to be connected to ground when programming, and it requires IO0 to be held low on boot to enter bootloader, then the EN pin must be brought low to reset the device. This is done currently by alternately plugging in and removing jumper wires from a breadboard. It works, but it's annoying. To make it easier, I designed an interface board from the FTDI Basic with pushbuttons to switch IO0 and EN pins. It has a 6-pin ZIF connector which will be used to connect a ribbon cable to a corresponding 6-pin ZIF connector on SOL V3. Programming will be extremely simple then.

Some people I have discussed the project with have asked if SOL is able to run standalone, completely disconnected from WiFi. This could be useful if evaluating a field mounted PV setup, for example. Currently, this isn't possible. The EEPROM used to store data is small, not large enough to store data for a long time (6+ months is the target). 

However, I have been playing with the idea of using the flash storage on the ESP32 for this. Recently, I learned about a port of sqlite to the ESP32. I tested it out, and it is very easy to use and quite fast. Flash has limited lifetime in write cycles per page, but by storing intermediate logging data in the ESP32 RTC sram, and only writing in chunks, recording data over a year should be possible without risking flash degradation. The current SOL firmware only requires about 650KB, and the ESP32 module used has 4MB of flash storage. A rough calculation of storing data at 5 minute intervals over 12 months indicates about 2.9MB needed, so it seems ballpark possible. A similar approach would also allow me to remove the EEPROM storage. The ESP32 also has easy interfacing to an SD card, offering effectively unlimited storage, but that adds components, size, and cost to the design.

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