solar charging/draw guidance

Projects General Guidance
1

hello, i am working on a project that will use both a battery pack and solar charging to power the arduino, i have looked at other projects and haven't found the info i need.
materials in use:
arduino mega 2560
arduino wifi 101 shield
adafruit motor/stepper/servo shield (powered seperatly)
osepp sensor shield
2x 5v 200ma solar panels (in series, providing 10v 200ma charging)
Adafruit PowerBoost 500 Shield - Rechargeable 5V Power Shield with battery(or other depending on sugjestions)

the only things i will need to have powered by the battery/solar charging is:
arduino mega 2560
wifi 101 shield
osepp sensor shield

so my question is , will the 10v 200ma's be enough to power this project since the motors will be powered seperatly? i have heard that the wifi 101 shield wants 1000ma or 1 amp to function, i haven't had time to test the power requirements yet which is why i am here.

2

In order to properly size battery and solar panels, you must know the average and maximum current draw of the circuit.

You also have to take into account the number of daylight hours and number of dark or stormy days to expect.

3

many thanks for the reply, and thank you for the info. the battery i was expecting to use just for ease of maintenance and max up time was a 2500mah li-po
but my concern is that the 10v 200ma charging rate during a sunny day might not be enough to make the project last before the battery can't power it due to low charging rate without taking the battery out to charge it.

thoughts?

4

We will never know until more detail on expected current draw is given.

As per:

If the unit is going to consume 200mAh 100% of the time, a 200mAh panel will nowhere near do.

If the unit is going to sleep and only consume 200mAh for 30 seconds every hour (about 1% of the time)...then it would be fine (as a guess).

5

thank you, i will have to grab a multi meter down the road and a breadboard barrel jack to get my total power draw, than you for your help.

6

You need to take into account that the quoted output of solar panels is what they produce in bright sunlight when facing directly at the sun. Most of the time the ouptut is likely to be substantially lower.

This JRC solar page may be of interest.

...R

7

I wouldn't worry too much about the ability to run the load, even though there appears to be over voltage protection built in I doubt the battery will last long at 10VDC into a 3.7 volt nominal battery.
You did read the disclaimer on the battery page about correct charger, didn't you?

8

thank you all, i'm actually not worried about running the load, it's the charging of the battery, and yes i read the disclaimers, i have recently decided to temporarily run both the motors and the arduino off an outlet until i can get exact numbers for the power draw for just the arduino, wifi, sensor shield and sensors. the other thing i have to figure out is how much extra i will need to have for distance variences in the sensors( while negligable, might still need to calculate that into the power draw once i switch over to solar/battery)
thank you all for your input, will keep you updated on the progress.