Jasper Sikken's Solar Harvesting Boards Make It Easy to Integrate E-peas' AEM10941 Into Your Designs
Latest lithium-ion capacitor board joins existing models which store their power in lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors respectively.
Maker Jasper Sikken has released a trio of compact boards aimed at making it easy to add solar energy harvesting to your next project, even if it's designed for use indoors: One for use with lithium-ion capacitors, one for batteries, and one for supercapacitors.
"[These boards come] with the AEM10941 Solar Harvesting IC from E-peas," creator Sikken explains of his three designs. "The AEM10941 harvesting IC is very suitable for indoor applications, because it has an ultra low power startup. The boost converter starts at a very low 380mV input voltage and 3uW input power. The IC gets most power out of the solar cells by doing MPPT maximum power point tracking every 5 seconds."
Developed with castellated pin-headers allowing for breadboard, jumper wire, or surface-mount module use, the three boards differ in how they store the power they harvest. The first is designed for use with lithium-ion capacitors (LICs), offering a regulated 2.2V 80mA output; the second uses more traditional lithium-ion batteries and has 3.3V 80mA and 1.8V 20mA regulated outputs; and the final model is made to use two supercapacitors, offering the same 3.3V 80mA and 1.8V 20mA regulated outputs with the former switchable to 2.5V to boost run time.
"This board is ideal for solar powered BLE [Bluetooth Low Energy] or LoRa connected sensors," Sikken writes of the lithium-ion capacitor variant, the newest of the three designs, "because it integrates maximum power tracking, LIC charging, and it has a regulated voltage output in a tiny and easy to integrate board."
"Indoors (~500 lux) and with the smallest solar cell the storage element is charged at 50uA for 10 hours. Then the application must have an average current of (50uA*10hrs/24hrs) 20uA or less. That's enough for a simple Bluetooth Low Energy beacon or a very simple LoRa application."
The boards are now available on Sikken's Tindie store, priced at $24.90 for the lithium-ion capacitor version, lithium-ion battery version, or the supercapacitor version.