Home
JAQForum Ver 20.06
Log In or Join  
Active Topics
Local Time 21:45 29 Mar 2024 Privacy Policy
Jump to

Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.

Forum Index : Electronics : MM/Arduino Low Current Solar Charger

Author Message
ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 191
Posted: 04:25am 05 Nov 2019
Copy link to clipboard 
Print this post

Hi All,

I'm looking at making a few solar sensors and I want the onboard chip (Arduino in my case) to control the charge on a 1.3AH AGM battery from a 5W solar panel.

Before I reinvent the wheel I thought I'd see if anybody has done somehting that has proven reliable? There's a heap of info on the internet, but none of them come back in two years and update that it's still working.
 
ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 191
Posted: 04:32am 05 Nov 2019
Copy link to clipboard 
Print this post

I tried to find a similar thread that I saw a while ago, but for some reason it turns out searching the forum for "solar sealed lead acid charger" isn't very productive.
 
Warpspeed
Guru

Joined: 09/08/2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 4406
Posted: 04:43am 05 Nov 2019
Copy link to clipboard 
Print this post

Why not just use a purpose built lead acid battery charger control chip such as the UC3906.
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/uc3906.pdf

All this has been done before, and the UC3906 offers a fairly sophisticated charging algorithm, even though its all just an analog control circuit.  It has been the basis of a huge number of successful commercial battery chargers, and should work fine for you too.
Cheers,  Tony.
 
mackoffgrid

Guru

Joined: 13/03/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 460
Posted: 05:13am 05 Nov 2019
Copy link to clipboard 
Print this post

I have a myriad of machines with LA batteries that need their charge maintained.  5W panels are ideal and I use those cheap chinese LM2596 CCCV power supplies.
 
ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 191
Posted: 08:23am 05 Nov 2019
Copy link to clipboard 
Print this post

Thanks for the tip Tony, but it looks crazy overkill for what I'm doing. My panel can only put out about 300ma.

I don't want to put much effort in as it's just a stop gap while I refine some lithium MPPT circuits. I think I'll just use an off the shelf PWM charger and wear the extra 5mA or so of current draw.
 
Print this page


To reply to this topic, you need to log in.

© JAQ Software 2024