Full Botanicalls circuit with solar sensor battery boost
Kate Hartman and I are working on augmenting Botanicalls with a solar panel that will act as both a light sensor and a battery charger for each plant in the project. The full circuit schematic is above with a detail showing the solar charge and sensor connections below. We’re planning to try a 3 Volt rechargeable battery with a low-drop voltage regulator for our power supply. Click on each of the images for a full-size graphic.
Detail of solar sensing and battery boost sub-circuit
The next project steps will be to build the sub-circuit on a test breadboard, to see how well different panels are able to charge various batteries while sensing light values using the Arduino microcontroller.