# DIY solar powered charging



## wesmantooth267 (May 28, 2012)

Hey all, I am looking into making a diy solar station to charge nexus 7, galaxy nexus, ipad 3/iphone. I have basics down and am looking more into the necessary materials. However I am not as keen on how to make the board to help make the current more stable and doesnt kill my electronics, for example DC solar panels to AC Power. I havent decided to go with outlets or just USBs. If anyone has interest or made one for themselves maybe they can share? I would love to document the process and show how it went. For now I will just tool around on instructibles, searches, and other things to help learn the process. Any input would be great.


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## Thorn11166 (Jul 8, 2011)

Can i ask why you want to go to AC from DC? If you are just wanting to charge devices I would just go for USB connections then you would have no need to convert it to AC. It would pretty much work like your car charger and just push it from the car battery to your phone with the proper amount.


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## Liquidretro (Aug 3, 2011)

I agree, with Thorn. Going from Solar DC to AC for a Wall charger and back to DC again would be much more difficult, and pretty expensive. You would need a lot more panels to do it.

My question is what is the OP goal here? What size are they looking for this to be? The N7 wall charger outputs 2A which is quite a bit, it will charge with less (not sure how much less). And the size is going to be larger. Less Amps means your charge time will be a lot less, and I am sure there is a point where when it gets too low it wont charge. You can put voltage regulators in place to prevent spikes that are too high, but would need batteries or something to prevent current from going too low.

Here are some places to do some more research at. Also look for iPad DIY Solar charging, since it needs about the same amount of A to charge.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Pocket-Solar-Panel-Smartphone/dp/B006HP7KXC
http://www.bootstrapsolar.com/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1384850


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## Thorn11166 (Jul 8, 2011)

I would suggest getting a car battery or something similar, that way when you aren't using it to charge it is always building up a charge and not just waiting energy. But you would have to alter the flow for usb which shouldn't be to bad, plus you'll need a charge regulator for the battery to prevent overcharging and such

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


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## Kpa2727 (Aug 24, 2011)

You can do this with ease and for a bout 20 - 40 bucks and all the voltage regulaton has been done for you. Get 2 of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Solar-Panel-USB-Battery-Charger-for-mobile-cell-phone-nokia-Samsung-MP3-MP4-PDA-/300608080547?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item45fda34aa3 or 2 of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Solar-Panel-USB-Battery-Charger-for-mobile-cell-phone-nokia-Samsung-MP3-MP4-PDA-/290763671792?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item43b2dd88f0 wire them in series and your all set. I have the 2nd one but it need more omph for a solar charger. it works fine for black berries. so what you need is to wire them in series for more output. as for how it's setup. It has a solar charger with usb output built in. a backup reserve battery and a solar panel already configured for what you want. It's your perfect starting point and can be done cheap.


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## Thorn11166 (Jul 8, 2011)

A good place to start before you even start is consider where you are going to put it? if you just put it in a window it will not work to its full potential. also while two of those panels would get you the right current, combined they wouldn't give you a full charge so it would probably get you about 2/3 charge. another possibe solution is to grab something like this http://www.ebay.com/...9#ht_2504wt_922 and pair it with Kpa's solution just make sure the powerbank can be charged by usb also, might cost you a little more but then you would be completely mobile if you had to leave it in your car on the dash or something on a trip and everyone else has the car chargers, could probably even get away with just 1 solar charge panel as long as you left it to charge quite often. Simply the best way to find a solution for you is to know where exactly you are going to be putting it to charge.


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