DIY | Voltaic Systems – Solar DIY and Device Charging

Mount over 60 Watts of solar panels on the back of a circa-1987 Dave Scott Centurion bicycle and you get a pretty powerful phone, tablet and even laptop charging system. We built this in celebration of NYC’s Bike to Work …

Portable Solar Charging for Bike to Work Day

We left the house a bit earlier than usual today to support NYC’s Bike to Work Day in our own solar-powered way. We decked out our usual commuter bicycle with 60+ Watts of portable solar panels, 180 Watt hours of …

UW-Madison Solar Powered Student Projects

20 students at UW-Madison recently built a solar charger as part of IEEE Student Projects. The goal of the program is to provide students hands-on experience with practical design skills as many of the students had never before been exposed …

Off-Grid Cabin in Hawaii

We really enjoyed working with LifeEdited to provide backup solar power for their compact New York apartment. So when Graham Hill (the Founder) asked us to help with a more ambitious project, to provide off grid power for his cabin …

Portable Charger for Microsoft Surface

First it was Apple with their MagSafe, 30-Pin, and Lightning adapters. Now Microsoft (Surface) and Lenovo (X1 Carbon) are making their own proprietary charging connectors. This is great if you are sitting next to an AC outlet, but not so …

Touchlight in the Life Edited Apartment

We have been working for some time on our latest product, the USB Touchlight. This is a super bright, USB-powered LED light, designed to run from our solar batteries. When our good friends at Life Edited asked us to set …

Connecting Solar Panel to New Lego Motor

We did a solar Lego car post a while back. It turns out the newer lego motors, the M-Motor 8883 and 8882 are a tiny bit more complicated than the older motors. They have a wire with 4 leads instead …

Ikea Solar Phone Charger Hack

Nicola from Italy just sent in his hack of the IKEA SUNNAN solar lamp so that it can charge his electronics. He increases the power to the lamp’s batteries using Voltaic’s 2 Watt solar panel and uses Adafruit’s Mintyboost to …

New Panel Mounting Method – Zipties

After Sandy, we deployed and installed hundreds of solar phone chargers and light systems. We mounted a 3.4 Watt solar panel outside using double-sided sticky tape and connected it to our V11 USB Battery inside the window. By placing the …

Choosing a Lead Acid Battery for Solar Charging

Lead acid batteries have large capacities and are often available in many places around the world. But which lead acid battery should you use with solar panels? I recommend using sealed AGM lead acid batteries wherever possible and will describe …