• 11 Posts
  • 768 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Ha ha yes this isn’t meant to earn me anything more than blisters ^^

    I’ll try out some cheap panel to see if I can get anything rolling at all for starters.

    If it doesn’t work enough well, and I cant figure how to fold a bigger panel for example, I have a backup project which is a robo-boat, which could drift around in the ocean, but that comes with lots of other complications like is it legal, and salt water.

    Cheers



  • Thanks, this information is really useful!

    Okay so here I go, this is where I am at the moment, I have this old robot idea based on the hitcher robot (“HitchBot” for the curious) and as I’m somewhat aware of my shortcomings I’m trying for a very simple start robot and build on top of the experience from that one.

    So the first robot would be, and don’t forget this is just napkin figures to get a first iteration, 40 cm long, 20cm wide (16x8"), and not too tall.

    Inside would be, roughly, a raspberry, a camera, some 18650 batteries, two motors for moving (probably NEMA 8 stepper motors), electronics (controling the motors, charging the batteries) and a solar panel. I’ll have a usb charge module for convenience too and some way to measure the solar panel charge (so the robot can angle itself as good as possible). Maybe a servo for the camera angle, maybe one for the solar panel.

    Connected over wifi for starters, 4G in some distant future.

    The 18650 could theoretically hold like 10Wh each, and one could drive the PI for some 10-20 hours (or weeks sleeping) or the motors, hopefully an hour or two.

    Theses calculations are wrong ofc but hopefully not too off.

    The robot would roam around in the summer time, in France, so lots of potential sun. Battery power to the rescue when stuck in the shadows.

    Just extrapolating the numbers you just gave (3 x those 100w panels could give 100w in ideal conditions) gives 8 watt for a 20x40cm panel in ideal conditions.

    So the robot would have to charge for 2 hour for a 1h of operation if losses are not more than some 35%. Not very good but somewhat usable. If it can charge in ideal conditions which is of course not the case.

    So maybe 1h of operation a day?

    If so, then I’d be quite happy for a first iteration.

    Thoughts?




  • As posted below:

    Just FYI I’mnot looking for a classic solar installation.

    You all seems to base your answers on that, so obviously communication gets complicated.

    I needed ballpark numbers for robotics and battery size calculations, napkin figures, to get somewhere to start off of.

    I got my answer, as I edited in in the question.

    Thanks BTW and sorry if you spent a lot of time trying to help me, I have definitely learned enough to set up solar panels at home on top of it all.


  • Just FYI I’mnot looking for a classic solar installation.

    You all seems to base your answers on that, so obviously communication gets complicated.

    I needed ballpark numbers for robotics and battery size calculations, napkin figures, to get somewhere to start off of.

    I got my answer, as I edited in in the question.

    Thanks BTW and sorry if you spent a lot of time trying to help me, I have definitely learned enough to set up solar panels at home on top of it all.



  • You all explain how a classic solar panel installation works which is, as stated, not the information I’m looking for.

    To convert kWh to watts you divide by time. That is how it works. 1 watt for 3600 seconds is a kWh. 1 kWh collected during 3600 seconds averages out to 1 watt.

    The k means 1000, 1 kW is 1000 Watts, 1 kWh is 1000 watt hours. Etc.

    This is basic stuff people.

    Edit: internet at its finest, downvots the correct information.