Hi,
Having toyed with my SODAQ One plus base board for a while, I am wondering what is the proper procedure to recharge the LiPo battery that came with it?
Is it sufficient to attach the battery to the board and then connect the MicroUSB to the board to supply the power to recharge the battery. Do I have to ‘switch off’ the battery somehow when doing this?
Is the solar panel that I also bought with it powerful enough to recharge it?
How do I know when the battery is fully charged again?
Any feedback is highly appreciated!
The solar panel is sufficient to recharge the battery, at least with a lot of sun, I did a test yesterday:
As you can see, I had the SodaqOne in the sun all day yesterday and it charged from 3,95V to almost 4,1 V while waking up every minute to send a payload. This night it was slowly discharging, without light on the solar panel, while still waking up every minute.
You can read the battery voltage from the payload of the UniversalTracker sketch, I have a payload function to decode in place in my TTN application:
function (bytes) {
// Decoder
// Here can decode the payload into json.
// bytes is of type Buffer.
// todo: return an object
var epoch = (bytes[3] << 24) | (bytes[2] << 16) | (bytes[1] << 8) | bytes[0];
var batt = (3000+10*bytes[4])/1000;
var temp = bytes[5];
var lat = (bytes[9] << 24) | (bytes[8] << 16) | (bytes[7] << 8) | bytes[6];
var lon = (bytes[13] << 24) | (bytes[12] << 16) | (bytes[11] << 8) | bytes[10];
var alt = (bytes[15] << 8) | bytes[14];
var speed = (bytes[17] << 8) | bytes[16];
var course = bytes[18];
var sats = bytes[19];
var ttf = bytes[20];
return {
course: course,
satellites: sats,
time_to_fix: ttf,
latitude: lat,
longitude: lon,
epoch: epoch,
battery: batt,
speed: speed,
temperature: temp
};
}
On my server (using the MQTT method) I receive a JSON-formatted string with the values defined by my payload function.
This is the source for the supplied battery chart above.
Ok, so I should be able to actually power the One with the battery, whilst recharging it a the same time with the solar panel? Great, I will try that and monitor the battery voltage with the tracking software.
Thanks for a quick reply!
The charge controller on the board will charge the LiPo (when required) using either the USB 5V source or the input from a solar panel (if the voltage is sufficient). You can recharge the battery by using a solar panel or via USB.
