When I’m building Solar Shrubs and other solar-powered creations, I often scavenge cells from various off-the-shelf devices such as solar garden or security lights. But these cells are rarely labeled as to their voltage, current, and power output. So it’s off to my bread-boarding station. First, I put each cell under a lamp and connect it to my multimeter to get
Arduino Solar Cell Tester Continue Reading
Last winter I experienced some problems with my car battery. I knew that it was about time to replace it so off I went to buy a new one. This fact reminded me of an old article about a car battery/charging system diagnostics kit I had seen in one of those 1980s electronics magazines. That
Troubleshoot your car battery with ATtiny Continue Reading
*NOTE* THIS PROJECT IS DONE BY A GROUP OF STUDENTS FROM SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC. Telemetry – Solar Cells Our project is using Arduino with the ZigBee to transmit and receive data from the solar cell. Data will be shown in the LCD and the software called “X-CTU”. Components used: 1 Arduino Uno 1 ZigBee Shield (Transmitter)
Telemetry with solar cell using an Arduino Continue Reading
So if you are like this Lazy Old Geek, you have a lot of rechargeable batteries lying around. I wrote another Instructable with some battery tips. http://www.instructables.com/id/Rechargeable-Battery-Tips/ Amongst these batteries, I have a lot that no longer work or don’t work very well. So I decided to try to revive them. First step: If the
Battery Reconditioner using an Arduino Continue Reading
I needed a couple of AA batteries and found the display at the supermarket where they were all arrayed. Normally when I’m shopping in the supermarket, I tend to look at the price/kg or price/l when comparing similar products. In the case of the batteries, there was no such indicator. Fine, I thought, I’ll work
Measuring Battery Capacity With an Arduino Continue Reading
If you’ve ever wanted to power your Arduino or AVR from a battery for development testing (batteries have different power delivery qualities than, say, transformed AC or even a regulated wall wart in DC) testing but were tired of going through batteries (Hey, I admit I’ve sucked batteries dry in hours because of a slipped-up
Power your Arduino with a Hand-Cranked Battery Continue Reading
This is super simple but very useful if you are in a hurry or just like to do things yourself and on the off chance you didn’t know, this is about the easiest way to add mobile power to your Arduino. After looking at a number of battery power solutions for Arduino ranging from Lithium
9 Volt battery adapter for Arduino Continue Reading
This project is an update of my original Peak Power Tracker Battery Charger Project. It is designed to control a 12V solar panel charging a 12V lead acid battery. The updated version of this project uses the Arduino Duemilanove development board (from www.sparkfun.com) as the basis for the project. Then I used the Arduino Protoshield
Arduino Peak Power Tracker Solar Charger Continue Reading
As many of you may know, this Lazy Old Geek loves Arduinos. Many of my projects are portable and need a battery source: http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Pedometer/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Nokia-LCD-Sensors/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultrasonic-Tape-Measure/ All pricing was determined about early 2012. So, I’ve been using Adafruit 6 AA Battery holder $5.00 https://www.adafruit.com/products/248 with 6 AA rechargeable batteries. (See Picture) Another choice would
Arduino Battery Continue Reading
