Our goals in implementing the system were:
1. Align our support with how customers view our products — we’re trying to help people power their devices, not sell 4 Watt solar chargers
2. Allow our customers and potential customers to get accurate answers, faster
3. Reduce the amount of work we need to do! – hopefully, we can eliminate some of the inquiries that are simple, but take time to respond to
4. Make it easier to scale up our support team – right now, everything is managed by one person (mostly me) answering every tech support email. I love solving customer problems, but I’d like to be able to share that responsibility better.
4. SEO? – people are charging all sorts of different electronics. Maybe, by answering a large range of questions publicly in clear and precise manner, other people will Google similar terms and we’ll get more people coming to our site and learning about Voltaic. We’ll see.

My fear of course is that we open ourselves up a bit as well for when people are dissatisfied with one of our products. I don’t expect this to be an issue, and it provides good motivation to keep trying to make the best products we can and providing top-notch customer service. The second concern is the quality of the search on desk.com – what if someone searches for info on how to charge a MacBook and they get information on battery storage? We hope desk.com makes big strides here because that could be more frustrating than not having the search at all.

We chose desk.com over zendesk and getsatisfaction. We liked the customer interface of desk.com over the other entrants (clean, easy to use, fast). Zendesk had a much better email interface for customer responses, but it felt much more clunky in other ways. Try out the system now and ask us a question privately or, even better, publicly.

Like every month, we’ll be looking for individuals taking trips that inspire us to explore the world. In addition, Paul will choose a winner based on the quality of the connection that person or group makes with the local people and/or environment. Are you able to make a positive change that hopefully lasts well beyond your time on the ground?

Enter now by telling us about your trip and solar charging needs at adventure@voltaicsystems.com. Read more about the gear contest here.

Look for roadmonkey’s upcoming trips to Vietnam, Peru, Tanzania, Nicaragua and India later this year on their expeditions page. They’ll help you reach places you won’t find in a guidebook or with conventional travel companies, and give you the chance to push your boundaries in a safe, encouraging environment.

He’ll be charging a Nikon D40, a Go Pro, Canon T2i and an iPhone. We’re providing 2 x 3.4 Watt solar panels going into a V39 along with two camera cradles for the D40 and T2i.

Here’s a short video showing the setup:

If you’re about to embark on an epic adventure, you can enter for free solar gear here.

The Voltaic parts for this kit were:
2 x 2.0 Watt panels
1 x V11 USB Battery
1 x 2 Panel Circuit box

Wire channels from panels to the battery.

Waterproofed wire connecting panels to battery.

Bag with panels removed.

Storage compartment for V11 battery.

Completed charger on Ortlieb handlebar bag.

Sunlight was limited, but we did find a window ledge that gets a few hours of sun a day. That should be enough to run a couple of LED lights plus take a cell phone and iPad off the grid.

Here’s the plan.

We decided to use two of our V39 USB batteries as the power reservoir. These will be charged from 4 of our 3.4W 6V solar panels. They will run end to end along the window ledge. We chose charcoal so they would blend in:

The idea is to mount the panels on a plastic backing and attach the backing to the ledge. We are still working on that part, we wanted to get the wiring in first before the builders closed up the walls.

The panels connect in parallel using our 4 panel circuit box (6V setting is parallel).

We spliced into the power out cable and ran a connecting wire through an existing hole in the wall (used for the cable TV). Then we salvaged a couple of 5.5×2.1mm plugs and spliced them on to make the connection to the two V39 batteries. And that is our basic solar charger

The builders are going to make a niche in the closet for these batteries just above a set of draws where the phone and iPad can sit to charge.

To power the lights we will connect to the USB output of the batteries. So we hacked a couple of USB plugs on to 18 gauge wires which we then ran through the ceiling to the locations we had chosen for the lights (the maximum power from the USB port will be 2amps at 5V so 18 gauge should be overkill).

On the light end of the wire we needed to come up with some sort of plug and mount for the light. We decided to integrate the two using a collection of parts from the local lighting store.

We tied knots in one of our “shoulder wires” (with a 3.5×1.1mm female plug on the end) then passed it through the threaded rod, filled the rod with silicone to hold the wire in place, and then put a cap on the rod to be sure the plug could not push through. We found a bracket at the lighting store which we used to secure the whole thing to the ceiling.

Next for the lights. Actually they were talking “solar chandelier”. That will have to be the subject for another post since we haven’t made bit that up yet.

Filipe is getting $250 towards gear to power his Canon 7D DSLR, Panasonic AG-AF 100 video camera, iPhone and MacBook. He’ll be mounting a 16 Watt solar panel on the pack horse connected to the V60 battery in his dry bags.

Go to Filipe’s site.
Follow Filipe on Facebook.

The goal of a charge circuit is to protect both the battery and your device. If you don’t have charge protection, you can damage the cells on a battery or cause a fire. Please use caution whenever charging batteries from solar power (or any other power source), they are not toys.

The activities mentioned here require special test equipment to show how the batteries behave under different conditions. If you don’t have the equipment, you’re more than welcome to follow along or perform simplified tests with a multimeter.

Failure to use a charge control circuit will adversely affect the performance of your battery over time in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario, cells may explode, catch fire, or otherwise cause serious harm and damage to people and property. By avoiding these hazards, usable battery life can be preserved and extended. The best battery chargers will implement a range of protections and detection methods to rapidly and safely charge your batteries without damaging them.

Typical Protection offered by charge controllers and power management electronics:

Over Charge – Voltage and/or Current regulation is used to prevent the cells from taking on too much power, too rapidly, and overcharging. In simple circuits, linear devices such, as regulators, are used to limit voltage and/or current. In more advanced circuits, a microcontroller is used to monitor and control charge functions. The protection method varies according to cell chemistry: NiMH batteries require a circuit that detects a change in voltage or temperature, where Li-ion cells require a two-stage constant-current/constant-voltage charge method.

Over Discharge – Discharging the battery will cause the cell voltage to drop. The over-discharge protection monitors the cell voltage, turning off the output when the voltage drops below a preset “off” threshold. The output will typically turn back on once the cell voltage rises above a preset “on” threshold. Over Discharge protection can occur prematurely (before the cells are completely discharged) if the power consumed by the load is too high, but not high enough to trigger the short-circuit protection.

Short Circuit Protection – When a load draws too much current from the output of the battery, the output is turned off. Sometimes this feature will require a manual reset of the battery, including disconnecting and reconnecting the load.

Over Temperature – If cells are charged or discharged rapidly, the chemical reactions taking place inside may generate excessive heat. Over temperature protection in the form of either a thermal circuit breaker or a microcontroller reading the changes of a thermal resistor will disable the input and output of the battery until the temperature has returned to normal operating conditions. In the case of NiMH cells, a sharp increase in temperature is usually associated with over charging, in which case the charge rate should be drastically reduced or terminated.

Here are images of Li-ion cell protection employed in our V11 USB Battery. On the left is a circuit board containing electronics that protect the cells from overcharging and over discharging. On the right is a thermal breaker. If the cell temp exceeds 80 degrees Celsius, the break opens the circuit, disconnecting the cells from the rest of the power management circuit. When the breaker cools, it automatically resets.

WARNING – The following activities are demonstrations of circuit protection implemented in Voltaic Systems batteries. It is not recommended to try these with other batteries as you may permanently damage them.

Activity 1 – Over Discharge and Short Circuit Protection of the V60

What you’ll need:
• A programmable electronic load (one that will allow you to adjust the resistance OR the current drawn from the battery).
• A V60, V39, or V11 battery.
• Some way of connecting the output of the battery to the programmable load.M

Watch what happens when resistance in the load is dropped simulating a short circuit.

Activity 2 – Testing Overcharge Protection

What you’ll need:
• A programmable power supply (one that will allow you to adjust the voltage and limit the current).
• A V60, V39, or V11 battery.
• Some way of connecting the output of the battery to the programmable load.

Watch what happens to current flow into battery as the battery becomes full. (Note: Li-Ion batteries typically measure Voltage of the cells to determine when they are reaching full capacity. Other batteries such as NiMh will use different methods such as Delta-V.)

Here’s a video showing the connections and the charging. There may be some ruckus in the background and, yes, that is a sippy cup in the corner.

In our first test, the V39 charged the new iPad about 64% full. The new iPad has a 42.5 Watt hour battery, 70% larger than the iPad 2 so it does require more power to charge. The V60 should charge it full, but we’ll let you know for sure after we do more tests.

We still need to test our upcoming revision to the V11 on the new iPad, but given the much larger battery of this new model, it probably won’t be a great solution.

The Buddha Machine is a small plastic box that plays meditative music composed by Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian. (source: fm3buddhamachine.com/)

The device is inspired by electronic prayer boxes, popular in China, that play back looped recordings of Buddhist prayers. Instead of prayers, the Buddha Machine plays back various ambient music loops. The duo behind FM3 have even enlisted artists to contribute material for special editions, as in the Gristleism, developed by the industrial group, Throbbing Gristle, securing the device’s status as an alternative distribution format.

Back in February of 2011, FM3 posted a tantalizing preview of a Solar Buddha Machine prototype on their blog. After over a year of waiting, and much to our dismay, we still haven’t seen any sign of the solar powered version of the device.

We love these little boxes so much that we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands and see just what we could do to power the Buddha Machine I from pure sunlight. In this post, we’ll show you not only how to run your Buddha Machine(s) from solar, but also how to modify them to charge NiMH AA cells to keep the ambient loops going all through the night.

What you’ll need:
• FM3 Buddha Machine I
• Voltaic Systems 1.3W 10V Solar Panel
• Two AA NiMH batteries
• #0 or #1 precision Phillips screwdriver
• Soldering Tools (iron, solder, wire cutters/stripper, pliers)

Powering Directly from Solar

Super simple: to power the Buddha Machine directly from solar, simply connect the Voltaic Systems 1.3W Solar Panel to the DC input and position the panel in the sun.

AA NiMH Charging Modification

This part is a little more involved. First you’ll need to remove the screws from the back of the Buddha Machine’s casing.

With the screws removed, the circuit board is easily removed from the front portion of the casing. Turn it over and note the location of the power input jack.

Right next to it is a blocking diode, which makes our life easier because we don’t have to add one ourselves.

Flip the board back over. The next step is to move the green wire (negative battery connection) from its present location to the ground connection of the power jack. The power jack has a switch so that when you are running the Buddha Machine from external power, no current is sent into the batteries you may have inside. Warning: by performing this modification you may cause damage to any non rechargeable cells inside when powering from an external source (solar included).

That’s it! Close up the casing and slap some NiMH AA batteries in it. Connect the panel and you’ll be able to both play the Buddha Machine and charge the NiMH cells from solar.

How Well Does it Work?

Of course it wouldn’t be a true Voltaic Systems post without a brief look at how well the mod performs. We setup our Buddha Machine on the windowsill at the lab and took down some numbers to get an idea of how the energy is being used.

Here’s a shot of out testing setup, running the Buddha Machine directly from solar.

Directly from the 10V panel, we show that 1.4W at 11.12V is being dissipated through the Buddha Machine. Although we don’t have it pictured, a test from the bench supply at 6V indicated that the Buddha Machine’s maximum power consumption was 0.3W at .05A. What we suspect is happening is that internally, any excess voltage is being regulated, converted into waste heat internally, either through a zener diode or other voltage regulating circuit. Because the solar panel is operating at near it’s optimal voltage, a majority of that energy is wasted.

When we add the AA NiMH cells into the mix, we see the voltage drop to 3.53V and the power fall to 1.13W. The power drop is due to the panels operating below their peak power voltage. The voltage drop is a function of their internal resistance of the cells, their resting voltage, and the amount of current charging them. As the NiMH batteries are charging, they’re essentially absorbing the energy that was before turning into heat.

Sun to Runtime?

The current, shown at .32 amps while charging, gives us a clue as to how fast those cells are charging. The total capacity of the AA batteries is 2500mAh. If we’re charging at 320mA, our charge rate is a little over 0.1C, a little faster than trickle charging. What this means is that we should not charge the AA batteries for longer than 8 hours if starting from empty, even less time if we’ve only discharged them a little. If the Buddha Machine uses at most .3W and our cells are charging at .77W (including NiMH efficiency), then we can expect 1 hour of sun to give us 2.5 hours of runtime. A full charge from the 2500mAh AAs will give us about 2 days of ambient looping bliss from our Solar Buddha Machine.