Outdoor solar harvester
Supported hardware
- Solar charger boards: CN3065, CN3791, MCP73871, TP4056 both shortened and full-size boards.
- Solar panel sizes: 90x70mm and any arbitrary size upwards of that, limited only by printing volume and your imagination. Pre-made sizes (you'll find ready STL files for all those sizes in stl/ folder):
● 110x110
● 112x84
● 115x85
● 125x110
● 130x110
● 135x135
● 136x110
● 138x82
● 145x145
● 165x130
● 165x135
● 165x165
● 200x130
● 213x92
● 220x170
Down to 80x65mm (which is the size of the central opening where electronics is housed) is doable, but there'll be some extra space around the panel.
For solar panels smaller than 80x65mm and any sizes not readily available under stl/ folder, you'll have to customize the part under enclosure/front/solar_panel_frame.ipt
- Battery: any 18650 lithium cell, with 2 types of holders: CGS and BLM:
BOM and detailed instructions
Refer to this blog post: Homemade solar harvester to power your outdoor projects.
Version 2 specific info and updated assembly instructions are here: Outdoor solar harvester v. 2.0.
I recommend at least skimming through both posts, because essential details/tips and tricks are all over both of them.
Description of contents
Modeled with Autodesk Inventor 2018