Powering your electronics project using a solar panel can be fun, but how do you know if you're extracting and utilizing all the power a panel can provide? I built a maximum power point tracking solar charge controller to make sure I could extract all the power available from my solar panel.
Maker project link: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/how-to-build-an-mppt-solar-charge-controller/2086272c48c2418b9e035516affac506
Full bill of materials can be found here: https://www.digikey.com/en/mylists/list/6UR93Q1BYV
Github repository with all source files can be found here: https://github.com/bytesizedengineering/mppt-charge-controller
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Video Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:27 Solar panel specifications
02:09 Measuring a power curve
04:12 Graphing a power curve
05:18 Using a buck converter SMPS
06:08 Designing my own MPPT charge controller
06:35 Using the typical application circuit of the BQ24650
07:36 Assembling the custom PCB
09:23 Testing and troubleshooting the PCB
12:03 Writing MPPT firmware
13:35 Connecting a solar panel to the MPPT charge controller