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Not really. To power an Arduino you need a much bigger solar panel than a calculator. Those calculators aren't necessarily inefficient, they just hardly do anyt
by alar44 4y ago
Not really. To power an Arduino you need a much bigger solar panel than a calculator. Those calculators aren't necessarily inefficient, they just hardly do anything at all. You really can't do much more with a solar panel that size, it hardly captures any energy.
- Retric 4y agoArduino’s are very power hungry compared to low power electronics. RFID tags for example are extremely low power. That said, there are solar powered scientific calculators which have dramatically more computing power and much larger displays than what people think of a solar calculators and still operate indoors at low light levels. Ex: TI-36X Pro A modern redesign could probably probably get ~1 GFLOPs, but those things are more designed for standardized tests than to be a useful tool.
- akamaka 4y agoThanks, this is a great data point. TI has some higher end calculators which are not solar powered, so that gives a good estimate of what was possible (at least when they last redesigned them).
- etrautmann 4y agologitech used to get away with solar cells on the K750. It did sometimes die if left without much light but I was impressed it could operate as well as it did without direct sunlight.
- akamaka 4y agoThanks, this is a great example of what’s possible now, since it has wireless capabilities.
- gambiting 4y agoWe have them in all of our meeting rooms in our office, and they must charge enough just from the indoor lighting because they have been working for years without any battery changes(I don't think you even can change the battery in fact).
- iancmceachern 4y agoThe Microchip brand micro in the arduino wouldn't be the right choice here. Something like the TI MSP430 would, it runs on very very low power requirements and has sleep functions that have insanely low power draw.
- akamaka 4y agoThis is exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you. This TI chip draws a little more power during computing than a calculator solar panel would provide, but it could easily work if it stayed in sleep mode part of the time.