☀️ Solar for IoT

Solar for IoT

Two documents on powering small battery-backed outdoor devices — a sensor, a weather station, a LoRa mesh node — from a solar panel roughly 100 mW to 10 W. One walks two builds end to end; the other explains why the design works.

A Tutorial

Build-along: a five-rule cheat sheet, then two concrete projects — a Xiao nRF52 MeshCore repeater and a drone-detector node — with power budgets, bills of materials, wiring, sourcing, and a troubleshooting table.

A Practical Reference

Physics first: how a solar cell and its I‑V curve behave, why you need MPPT, how temperature and shading bite, how to size a panel and battery from a power budget, and how to keep a lithium cell alive outdoors — ending in a worked MeshCore-repeater example.

Reference material only — verify part numbers and thresholds against current datasheets before you build. Use at your own risk.