diy solar pouch for electronics
cool portuguese tunes played by foreign people. our gaita is getting popular. today we’re doing a small diy segment again
me and T first prototyped a solar pouch almost a year ago. we designed it because one of the issues with solar chargers by themselves is that you have to carry them along side your electronics. putting them in bags is common, but expensive, so we designed a pouch with a panel and a charging cable.
since the first test, i designed an improved version of it using a 6V panel that is a single piece, versus the other diy segment i did previously that used 1V cells. with this 6V panel and a diode, i made a trickle charger for the cellphone. basically, if there’s enough sun, it charges the phone. if you put the phone inside the pouch, it charges it and also it protects it. it’s handy and feels more organic than having a separate unit. the jack for the charger on this model is on the side, which makes it kind of ridiculous to use. i guess i could mod the phone, but instead i’m willing to bend the jack a little.
feel free to copy this design, it is under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. if you want to sell them let me know and we’ll work something out. here’s how to do it:
materials
- 6V solar panel with less than 3W (in this case, 2W) so it doesn’t burn your electronics equipment (see what the power of your cellphone charger is and choose a panel below that power)
- diode (any diode works, a shottky would be better, but i had a lot of regular ones). one advantage is that on a 6V polarization the diode should be at about 0.7V, which in turn makes the whole thing output 5.3 ~ 5V for the cellphone
- a jack for your phone. i cut mine from an old charger. make sure it works (this was the second one i used, the first one didn’t work)
- fabric, velcro and glue for the pouch. be creative. bland black pouches are so passé
- soldering iron, multimeter, solder and whatever you enjoy to have around when you do electronics
instructions
- sew a pouch that has about the same size as the panel. make sure it swells enough to stick to the panel even when the electronics are in it
- solder the diode to the panel (to the plus terminal, make sure it is polarized correctly so that current flows only to the cellphone)
- test the panel in direct sun. if it doesn’t work now, start again
- solder the other end of the diode to the cable and jack (check the plus and minus with a multimeter)
- test the panel on the jack terminals. if it doesn’t work now, start again
- glue the pouch to the panel using whatever glue you may have. put something inside the pouch so that you don’t glue the pouch to itself
- test it under the sun and happy charging!
results
it works! that’s it. this is an easy (and less extreme) way of doing a self-powered device. be creative! stick panels on everything!
demo video. i wasn’t drunk, i was filming with one hand, so i couldn’t plug the jack. the main thing is there: it charged!
i found this panel on some online store. just look for 6V panels and you’ll find some. these weren’t that cheap but they are sturdy and give enough juice to charge the cellphone in about 3 hours. also, on a lithium battery, you don’t want to charge all the time. but it’s definitely handy to have around. thanks for reading!