Yeah these look rather good for outdoor.
I was hoping for "small" as I may place these around the house in various places and they would look a little off. But for the outdoor sensors they are essentially as you said, an off the shelf solution.
I am looking at Nick Gammons stuff @jremington linked and he uses:
- Atmega328P-PU (~44uA in power down)
- MCP1700 (~1.6uA Quiescent)
- 0.47F 5.5V Supercap.
This all seems to work for him and its minimal parts.
Using an ATTiny84 (4uA) or even the ATtiny841 (1.52uA) and both can go down to 1.8V at 4MHz I think I could end up with a very small form factor which would mean they are easily just left on a windowsill or a bright part of the room and barely noticeable and also without the Brownout Detection on and no need for the external IC to reset the board each day in case of a brownout.
But definitely will be buying one or two of those for outside! Thank you :).
These are some interesting 6V panels which may be perfect for what I need.
His larger solar panel would charge the cap in something like 15s...so I am fairly sure even these could be enough (40mA about 35mm across).
