New Kickstarter SolarMAX LiPo and Lead Acid

October 28, 2019 Featured Topic, Grove, Grove Sensors, IOT, Kickstarter, Lightning, Projects, Raspberry Pi, SkyWeather, Solar Cells, Solar Power, SolarMAX, SwitchDoc Products, Thunder Board

New Kickstarter SolarMAX LiPo and Lead Acid

SolarMAX – Solar Power for Makers

The SolarMAX Kickstarter now Live!

Checkout the SolarMAX Kickstarter Here

SolarMAX LiPo and SolarMAX Lead Acid are SwitchDoc Labs designed systems to charge LiPo and Lead Acid batteries from Large  Solar panels in order to provide more power to small computer systems.   SolarMAX is designed to collect and return data about the solar panel system to the powered (or other) computer via a LoRa link.  SolarMAX collects and transmits the following data via 433MHz LoRa Radio every 30 seconds.  No data cable needed!  It transmits:

  • LiPo Battery Voltage
  • LiPo Battery Current
  • Solar Panel Voltage
  • Solar Panel Current
  • Load Voltage
  • Load Current

It also supplies the following about inside the SolarMAX box:

  • Inbox Temperature
  • Inbox Humidity

SolarMAX uses a 433MHz LoRa module which can transmit up to 2 kilometers or further with larger antennas and uses very little power.

 

Two Versions of the SolarMAX System

From your computer point of view, both of these SolarMAX systems (LiPo and Lead Acid)  are identical.  The data formats sent from SolarMAX to your computer are identical.   Only the protocol numbers (8 for SolarMAX LiPo and 10 for SolarMAX Lead Acid) are different.  Why are they different?   Really because it simplifies our testing of multiple SolarMAXs themselves.   You can customize the SolarMAX driver open source software to use other protocol numbers so you can have more than one SolarMAX system in range of your computer projects.   It’s really up to you.

 

Example Data From SolarMAX

 

('protocol_ID = ', 8)
('protocol_software_version = ', 2)
protocol 8 SolarMAX received
SMOTFloat=0c050c0
ITemperature from SolarMAX temperature: -3.3C
IHumidity from SolarMAX humidity: 85.5%
SolarMax batteryVoltage =   3.98
SolarMax batteryCurrent =  45.20
SolarMax loadVoltage =   5.05
SolarMax loadCurrent =  -0.90
SolarMax solarPanelVoltage =   0.02
SolarMax solarPanelCurrent =   0.00
SolarMax auxA =   0.00
SolarMax Message ID 68866
Tick! The time is: 2019-10-28 19:49:40.909440
Starting readWXLink
Tick! The time is: 2019-10-28 19:49:45.917437
Starting readWXLink
Tick! The time is: 2019-10-28 19:49:50.924796
after WXLink waitRX
-----------
block1= [171, 102, 103, 64, 83, 174, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 137, 128, 165, 64, 0, 236, 36, 192, 96, 96, 148]
block2= [66, 222, 36, 70, 65, 0, 0, 212, 194, 0, 128, 37, 67, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 128, 0, 0, 0, 0, 24, 254, 0, 0, 44, 157]
-----------
block 1
ab66674053ae0000000000000000000000000000008980a54000ec24c0606094
block 2
42de2446410000d4c20080254300000000000000800000000018fe00002c9d
-----------
('>>>>>>>>>>>>protocolblock=', 103)
Starting readWXLink
('block1 length=', 32)
('block2 length=', 31)
ReversedreceivedCRC= 2c9d
length of stb1+sb2= 59
ab66674053ae0000000000000000000000000000008980a54000ec24c0606094
42de2446410000d4c20080254300000000000000800000000018fe
calculatedCRC = 2c9d 
Good CRC Recived
('protocol_ID = ', 10)
('protocol_software_version = ', 3)
protocol 10 SolarMAX received
SMOTFloat=0ec24c0
ITemperature from SolarMAX temperature: -2.6C
IHumidity from SolarMAX humidity: 74.2%
SolarMax batteryVoltage =  12.38
SolarMax batteryCurrent = 106.00
SolarMax loadVoltage =   5.17
SolarMax loadCurrent = 165.50
SolarMax solarPanelVoltage =   0.00
SolarMax solarPanelCurrent =   0.00
SolarMax auxA =   0.00
SolarMax Message ID 65048
Tick! The time is: 2019-10-28 19:49:53.508700
Starting readWXLink
Tick! The time is: 2019-10-28 19:49:58.519515
after WXLink waitRX

What is a Grove Connector?

The way we have been wiring I2C connections before just didn’t work for building fast and quick IOT projects.  Then we found Grove.

There are hundreds of Grove Devices from multiple manufacturers around the world.     Just for a quick look finds over 100 boards.

You can’t plug it in backwards.   If you put the connector in the wrong plug it just doesn’t work.  No smoke.  No fire. This makes us happy as we look over into our Box Of Death, filled with boards we have ruined.

We quickly found the Grove connectors and their respective cables very useful. With the large selection of Grove I2C devices available, we decided to include a Grove connector on all our future boards and products.

For more information, check out our full Grove Tutorial here.