We first wrote about the MintyBoost back in 2006. Today, Adafruit has created a tutorial for making a solar powered MintyBoost. Using a MintyBoost, a solar panel, LiPo battery and a charger, they built on their Solar LiPoly tutorial. They fed the power tap output of the LiPoly charger into the battery input of the MintyBoost to perform the voltage step-up for USB devices. Based on an instructable that used SparkFun parts, this tutorial shows how to use parts that are available from one source. We hear that there will be some evolution of the MintyBoost coming down the line that will including charging capabilities.
Hi,
A great project ! I did one a few months ago. Very useful on sunny days.
http://www.equinoxefr.org/post/2010/01/24/chargeur-solaire-pour-gadgets-usb-telephone-gps/ (in french)
I can power smartphone, iphone and my Zi8 pocket camcorder.
what a coincidence, couple days ago i build something very similar
hm. apparently, at least for me, you don’t need to be signed in to instructables to view all steps on one page anymore
maybe instructables realize that they f themselves by treating visitors like crap,HaD you can make a notice too
Weird. I did this two years ago but with a smaller solar panel and larger battery pack
Very nice, I could do with one of these.
does it implement MPP?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_point_tracker
Any recommendations for an alternative to the charger circuit? (through hole IC I can ebay?)
I want to use a lipo cell but at $15 its a bit expensive for the little project I want to use it for. However I do like how it has lines for output, charge, and battery so it can be integrated into the device.
is it possible to use a call phone battery that has similiar capacity? ex 3.7v li-ion 1150mAh 4.3Wh