Reply To: Monitoring power consumption

I’ve had a 5v 2.0A usb charger plugged in for 3.5 hrs. The yellow charging light is still on. I think it should take ~2.5 hours to fully charge a 4400mAh battery with a 2.0A charger, so it should be done.

Does someone know if the board is getting any feedback from the battery on whether it’s accepting a charge or not? If there is not feedback from the battery, then I think the yellow light is a ‘power is now available to charge the battery’ light.

What’s interesting is that our first solar panel provided 180mA peak current…I think that means an uncharged 4400mAh battery would need over 24 hours of peak sun to fully charge. Given we’re very lucky to get 3 hours of usable charging light in a day this time of year, it makes sense that our batteries are not keeping up. The bigger solar panel we bought has 1,670mA. So it will come down to consumption during the approximately 22hours a day that has no sun (and typically cloud-obscured sun). And maybe a larger capacity battery to get us through the lean weeks.