A solar supercap powered Moteino (15Farad charged by BQ25504)

[Felix]

HeneryH,
Did you see my blog post about the solar powered Moteino+WeatherShield?

[HeneryH]

I had not, thank you.  I'll procure a 7.5 and 15 F and the other parts to see how they work with a MotionMot.

Edit - that series seems to top out at 7.5F.

[Felix]

You can wire them in parallel to increase capacity

[kni]

I'm currently testing my own supercap project, based on Felix's blog.

One photo of it is in this thread here:
https://lowpowerlab.com/forum/general-topics/mouting-examples-of-a-bare-solar-cell/

Turns out my solar panel was way too big for the application, which drove the voltage to ~5.6v on a sunny day. Fortunately, the capacitor does not appear to be damaged, but I've brought it back inside until I put a zener diode on it to regulate the voltage. In any case, I'll create a more detailed write up once the little issues are hammered out.

[HeneryH]

I'm going to order these to give it a try.  Totally guessing on some of the values so if you see something wrong please let me know...

Solar cell - https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/ixys/SLMD600H10L/SLMD600H10L-ND/3463130

• Voltage @ Pmpp  5.01V
• Power (Watts) - Max  111mW
• Current @ Pmpp  22.3mA
• Size / Dimension   0.866" L x 1.378" W x 0.079" H (22.00mm x 35.00mm x 2.00mm)

Super Capacitor - http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?qs=xIT89idmjZkhn0E0LyhRQQ%3D%3D

• Capacitance:    7.5 F
• Voltage Rating:    5 VDC
• ESR:    55 mOhms

I'm a trained EE from a long long time ago but haven't done circuit design in decades.  I know the basics of diodes, caps etc.  Help would be greatly appreciated

Need some protective diodes to prevent back-flow current.  Any suggestions for which ones?    Is protective circuitry needed for over charging the cap?  Seems like there are ICs purpose built for this but maybe these are overkill http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/datasheet/3625f.pdf and I also don't have the equipment or experience actually doing surface mount.

[Felix]

HeneryH,
Just get some 5-6V rated 2-3W solar cells from ebay, they are cheaper.
The easiest way is to go with a shottky diode to prevent backflow, any junk box should have one, worst case use a regular diode for a much larger forward drop.

[LukaQ]

Good news!  After installing Optiboot 6.2

Would you be so good and provide me with files I would need, even more so, what commands to run (or anybody else that knows how to). I can't use even the bootloader HEX that is already compiled, IDE just can't upload any sketch