Hi /diyi'm building an allsky camera and I'd like it to be fully power autonomous.I bought a 100W Dokio solar panel which seems to be working fine.I tried loading a lead battery: no problem.I draw something like 0,6A during the night, therefore the battery discharges.The issue is whn the battery is below 10,7V, it should cut the load and wait for the sun to reload it.During the night, the controler didn't stop and I found the battery at 7V this morning (yes I know, it's screwed)Do you guys have any experience with these cheap solar controler? Why does mine didn't stop?
current setup with a ASI120MC camera and a raspberry pi 4.The brown wire is probing the battery voltage through a voltage divider then a MCP3008.I calculated this divider draws 3,41E-6W so it's definitely not what discharge the battery to 7V in night hours.
user's manualwork mode is set at 24hI need the camera to run 24/7
the controler this morning.As I understand, the light bulb on the bottom right of the screen means the load is powered. At 8.1V battery, it definitely shouldn't.fuckin captcha
>>2988644Check the Discharge stop voltage setting, make sure discharge reconnect is higher than discharge stop. If that's all set correctly then you just got chinked. Those $20 Amazon controllers are all garbage. If you really want to save money then build your own dumb charge controller with an esp32, otherwise buy something from a cheapo "brand" like PowMr or Easun, those at least tend to work. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008129435762.html
>>2988645Light bulb doesn't mean anything, load is powered when there is also an arrow pointing to it. So if there is no arrow and your load is still working then the switching is faulty. Otherwise it's working as intended, maybe the charge controller itself is drawing power from the battery even after the load disconnects.
>>2988648>>2988647discharge stop is 10,7Vdischarge reconnect is 12,6Vfloat voltage is 13,7VI concur with your diagnosis, chinked. Indeed the solar controler looks pretty cheap. Thanks for the link. The solar panel seems to output a great deal of power though.The "powmr" manager looks pretty neet. What I'd like to do is monitor voltage/current from all the sources/loads. These devices doesn't seem to provide any measurement. Do you know any of these controler that might offer measure and communication protocol that I'd plug into the RPi?One issue is that ground voltage is not common with load/battery ground therefore if I make something with an ESP32 like you suggested, I'll need a differential comparator circuit, and shunt for current probing. Any tips on these kind of circuit?>>2988648It should draw something like 10mA for the controller. Thanks for your insight.
>>2988655>One issue is that ground voltage is not common with load/battery groundI mean ground voltage from solar panel isn't common to ground from load and battery ground, the 2 later are common.
>>2988655>communication protocolLook around aliexpress, if it exists, it will be there. But I'd assume the ones with comms, usually modbus, are gonna be a fair amount more expensive, and more targeted for large systems, i.e. not going to measure 10-50mA currents accurately.>Any tips on these kind of circuit?Just don't make them, buy everything as modules on aliexpress. They have current shunts and voltage sensor boards for any given voltage/amp range for cents. >>2988656Your solar panel doesn't matter really, the main things you need monitored are battery voltage and battery current. Also you could replace the entire solar charge controller with the esp32, then you could do whatever you want. You just need some fancy MOSFET to handle the peak current, one mosfet/npn for switching, bunch of fuses, one blocking diode. But it's a lot of work for nothing if you just want the camera to work, for that, all you need is a working charge controller.
>>2988657thanks for the down to earth & quick advice.I'm making a python program on the RPi to log the battery voltage and try to change the controller parameters if it might help.clear skies to you
big clive did a good run down on these cheap circuitshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezh0ylkAyTw
