Solar Shed Update

 

A quick update on the Solar Shed progress.  The snow has melted and there is some sun.  I have not been formerly taking down readings, but in general the battery has charged to slight over 14VDC on it at the day and about 13.8VDC in the morning.  Which is comparable to what I saw on the bench.

Moving to the real world is always going to bring on new issues.  What problems did I have, well 😛

• For the switch that turns on the LED Lighting, for some reason the weak pullups on that input was off.  The overhead LED  lights would go on and off randomly.  I was never a fan of those weak pullups, not sure why I did not just put a 10K or 100K pullup there.  Space and cost were not a driving factor.
• Next this switch does not wake up the PIC.  When is the PIC sleeping, at night .  When do I need the light, at night.  It is a simple fix, but I am waiting to gather more changes before fixing this.
  
• I had added a relay for selecting power source for PIC and etc, from either the battery or the solar panel.  I implemented the logic to use the Solar Panel as the power source whenever it is above about 8VDC.  But forgot to change the TRIS register for the drivers to an output.  No wonder I could not drive the relay to change the source.  Now as long as there is sufficient solar panel voltage, that powers the PIC and etc.
  
• All of the conversion constants moved a little, again.  1% resistors are nice, but they are still only 1% accurate.  Another change is to add an OLED screen that shows the ADC count instead of a calculated voltage.  Maybe that will help refine the conversion chart I showed earlier.
  
• The 7.5F supper cap took over 2 mins to charge the first time.  I thought there was a short somewhere since the voltage would not rise.  Then I remembered that an uncharged cap is a short. 

I have been thinking of a good test for the super cap.  What I am thinking now is around 8PM disconnect the battery.  The sun will be down, so no solar power.  Then before the sun lights up the solar panel, check if the PIC is still in sleep mode.  One way is to press one of the buttons that will illuminate on the LEDs.  It is a left over debug routine, that is actually quite useful.  The other is to measure the voltage at the Suoer Cap and see if it is providing sufficient voltage.  Then this test needs to be repeated without the OLED installed.  

The process continues.