Hello Andreas, just discovered your channel. How great it is that you are giving all this theoretical background before trying to build something. This is what more people should do. Good work, subscribed.
Ja ist denn schon wieder Sonntag :-). Vielen Dank Andreas für die sehr gut strukturierte Vorgehensweise, sowie Deinen Berechnungen und Erklärungen. Freue mich schon auf die Fortsetzung... :-)
I have almost certainly watched this video before but I didn't have any specific interest in solar power then. Now I do and I searched your channel for a video on exactly this topic. As is so often the case, your video gave me exactly the information I needed, avoided unnecessary and irrelevant detail and explained everything clearly. As we say in England, it was spot on. Thank you.
Andreas, Your videos, and this one in particular, is excellent. Pitched at just the right pace, and level for me anyway. I like the structure, and the order. These are some of the most informative, and useful, videos I have seen. Grateful thanks from SanFran.
Andreas, I really enjoy your videos, you obviously put a lot of thought into their structure and order. This makes for some outstandingly informative stuff!!! Many thanks from this very grateful Welshman.
Great video, thanks. I've been running an ESP-07 (all LED's removed) for more than a year now here on the Prairies in Canada where temperatures during the winter drop quite often below -35C. I used trial and error to figure out how long to put the ESP to sleep such that it wouldn't kill the battery during a worse case winter scenario. I will have to watch your video again and then apply these new learnings to see how much margin I was playing with. :) I am using a 1800mAh Li-on battery from a Sony PS3 Controller (rated at max charging current of 400mA and max charging voltage of 4.2 volts) and a 5V- 200mW 4.3cm X 3.4cm solar panel. When I tested the solar panel the maximum voltage I could get was 40mA and about 4.5V so I took a chance and connected it directly to the battery (so far so good and it's been more than a year!). I use only a diode to drop the voltage to the ESP and it has never gone above 3.4V. The ESP is on a 200s sleep cycle. As I said it has been working flawlessly for over a year but tomorrow I want to run this through your math. Thanks again for another wonderful and informative tutorial!
Thank you for your feedback. I think, physical laws are similar, even in the Prairies;-) Maybe this page helps for calculation of the power requirements of your ESP: battery-life.of-things.de/battery-life-calculator.php
Thank you. I have been looking at videos with similar content for the past few days and I yours has been the most helpful. I hope you continue to provide more. Wish I could give you two thumbs up
"In the middle I had to stop to drink a beer". This made my day! I really enjoy your videos/tutorials. They are always very informative and full of very useful knowledge as well as great results. Thanks for sharing!
Thank You for your time. I was also making some tests. Here we have more sun. 10W 5V panel + TP4506 + one 18650 + ESP8266 with deep sleep. Not that efficient but is working well so far. Looking forward for the next video.
Fantastic! It is as if you could see that I was experimenting with a solar panel and Li-On battery today & yesterday way on the other side of the planet. Plus I was trying to calculate panel and cell sizing too. Perfect timing and great spot-on content. Thanks. AND tomorrow is the Summer Solstice - optimal conditions for experimenting. I'm addicted to your videos.
Like your videos. They always start out with what you are trying to solve. That is very important. i often get lost in the weeds and forget about the original intent. I often don't need the projects you are working on BUT I always listen to learn. Great teacher!
Super useful. I need to work through the maths for my scenarios. Andreas you are a national treasure for, probably Switzerland, but where ever, most excellent.
"Because this is boring we do some tests outside..."... Cool, wirklich nicht schlecht eingebaut. Der Beitrag war aber so oder so sehr belehrend, vor allem die Fakten über die Sonneneinstrahlung und wieviel Energie man nun effektiv abzapfen kann. Besten Dank.
One of the best explanation in the whole youtube. Giving easy explanations to easy concept is an uncommon skill. This is real engineering: i'm sure the beer helps! Greetings from Italy
Cool, great topic! Interesting info and very informative video! I have a solar-powered network node laying in my window sill for about a year now. It's a 6V 1W panel connected to a ESP-07 module via a 650 mAh li-ion battery with a charger/protection module. It wakes up for ten seconds every 15 minutes, day and night. It survived summer, but stopped in the winter because it didn't get enough sun. It's only for testing/learning now, but in the future I want to make a solar-powered node for my automated garden project, so plenty work left.
Thanks for the info. Maybe you make the calculations I did for your device and compare the results. Then, we would already have one confirmation (or not) of the theory...
This is awesome. thank you for producing this video. I learned a ton, am going to apply the knowledge right away, and I know it took you a lot of work to do this.
Great video. Really simple common sense calculations. I think anyone dabbling should be able to figure out this themselves but if not you would have helped. What I like best about your channel is the clear straight engineering without any BS. No lies or faked stuff. Too much of the internet and social media is being invaded by persons peddling fake information. Please do keep up the good work. I will keep watching.
Thank you! Very interesting. I've been thinking of doing some solar energy experiments myself, sadly northern Sweden is lacking in sun hours most of the year. :)
Thank you for yet another interesting video. Some things you might want to look into, if you don't get the expected efficiency are: Angle of the panel (I noticed your panel laid flat on the table, which is not optimal), and temperature (cool panels are more efficient than hot panels).
I tried with various angles, but did not get big differences (maybe because it is summer and I did the measurements in the early afternoon. Then, I took the easy(flat) way. But you are absolutely right concerning the angle. If you have a close look at the diagrams in the video, you see the optimal angle for a whole year. Concerning temperature I cannot do a lot, I think, because the place is defined by the purpose. But, because the most critical time is anyway in December/January, the temperature maybe is not a big issue (in summer, I will have too much energy).
This is my favorite video of yours to date. The fact that someone was kind enough to translate it to Portuguese also means I can scare my father (who thinks solar panels probably aren't much harder than connecting panel, battery and an LED lamp in parallel) all under the guise of a friendly 15min video. Not gonna lie I still don't get why MPPT is a $100 device instead of a little board that you buy in packs of 50.
Hi Andreas, first thanks a lot for all the good videos! For a cheap MPP tracker I can recommend a simple TP 4056 Lipo charging board. My setup works as follows: 5V Solar Panel, the charging board (w/ cell protection) and a LiPo battery. As long as the light is very dim, the voltage from the panel is too low for the charging board and no current flows. When there’s more light, the PV voltage climbs over the battery voltage and the charging board starts to charge the battery. If the charging current is too high, the PV voltage drops and so does the current - the PV voltage can climb again. So the charge controller will always keep the PV voltage at the point where it can draw the maximum power from the panel. Two things have to be taken care of: - . - To keep the system from oscillating, I put a capacitor parallel to the panel- The maximum input voltage of the TP4056 is 8V. When the battery is fully charged, no more current is drawn from the panel and the PV voltage will rise to the open circuit voltage. This should not be higher than these 8V
I look forward to your controller video. Many of them have a USB connector. They claim up to 5V @ 2A, which is enough to power a Raspberry Pi 3. Of course there is no need to start a discussion on how big the batteries would need to be for that application, since we are talking about an ESP8266 & 18650 batteries. Possibly/probably a small single board controller would be sufficient. I'm now going to watch your video #64 again, about batteries appropriate for the ESP8266. Thanks for your videos.
I think, we also can power a Raspberry Pi. The same formulas would apply, just the panel and the battery would be bigger (about 3 times). And i do not know of a "sleep mode" for the Raspberry
Oh Andreas😀 A superb video, full of useful information and there is going to be a follow up too🙏 It's wonderful that you explain the math and importantly your thought process. I believe you managed to link together a number of things that I thought I understood. So very happy to see things more clearly. As always I am very appreciative of your time and efforts and just how concise you are. The project I am about to start is solar 2 axis for a 160 x 160 solar panel. So this is a great help. Bless you Andreas 👐
Thanks, Dean. Änd of course, we are interested in the results of your project, especially the efficiency (more energy because of good positioning vs energy consumption of motors)!
Andreas Spiess noted thank you. I will set up another INA219 to monitor the motor power requirements and as you say, work out the efficiency. From my research you only need to be within + or - 5 degrees. You will still be 99.6% efficient within this range. So had planned to only adjust at 6 degrees. I assume this is what you were reminding me to think about? Many thanks
Looking forward very much to the next video especially cutting off charging the battery at 4.2v and at the low voltage point. This should solve issues I've been having using the piZero and the sparkfun sunny buddy MPPT controller.
Andreas very useful video. I have been trying to do a similar thing for my esp8266 could not decide on a charge controller. Looking forward to the next episode.
Sunny Buddy - MPPT Solar Charger from sparkfun and Adafruit USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger - v2 both quite expensive and then there was also this one thepihut.com/products/solar-lipo-charger-3-7v?ref=isp_rel_prd&isp_ref_pos=4
I love Your videos. You are encountering and describing with easy words (and tests!) many of problems with building IoT devices. Not only simple "Hello World" projects. :)
Very helpful, thank you! Have been considering making my weather station solar powered, or at least including a method to charge the two AA batteries it runs from. This will help greatly! :-)
Great tutorial. This open up so many applications. Im more I treated in the charging units. If there is bigger, smaller and also if you can order them online
Thanks Andreas you saves my times and moneys . Very helpful and experimental video Great job.I hope God gives you a more healthy and long life.Best Regards
I think too, that it could be an interesting part. But I also think (or fear), that we have to keep the number of parts as low as possible because they will use energy all the time, also when there is no sun...
I'm doing something similar. I switched from the ESP8266 to the ESP32 so I can more easily monitor battery voltage and sensor voltages. One thing I noticed though was that the MPP charge controllers are expensive. So expensive, I just opted to buy more solar cells, which are comparatively cheap, and use a TP.4056 charge module (very cheap) It would have been a better idea for me to have done a proper economic analysis though. Looking forward to your analysis! Keep up the great work!
Here's a graph of the past few days of data logging to google docs. You'll notice gaps in data which is when my ESP32 has been hanging and causing my battery to drain completely. I hope I've solved the problem, but I've found the sample code for things like the DS18B20, Wifi connections, and so forth need some improving. Unless you have some good watch dog timers, you need to make sure your code is really bulletproof. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ni20axRWzek2f--lTF_YY7c1_GgZjzM9ziM6vrI6V38/pubchart?oid=108740660&format=interactive
Very good. Very very good. I live in Brasil, Mato Grosso state, very warm and have very sun, and was thinking about and esp8266 for solar weather station, and this video will help me very much, thank you!
Thanks for sharing I learned a lot from this and your videos. I am building a weather station using ESP8266 and this is spot for my power requirements. I live in Malta so solar irradiance should be similar to that of Dubai. Many thanks.
A trivial typo at 2:15 minutes into the video. "×" used instead of "=". Your video has read "the question" in the minds of so many and answered excellently. Congratulations and thank you.
Hi Andreas, good information, thank you. I am running an arduino based weather station with solar power in Zurich. I made good experience with a charger module. This is the one: 03962a / TP4056. but there are two versions, one with dedicated battery connectors and one with shared ones. I prefer the newer version with dedicated connectors. Cheers SJ
