Well, #7 did not work. I think I was getting some voltage leakage to the solar or the other cells. What I did was add 4 Schottky Diode between the charges and the solar panels on the positive wire. We shall see how this one goes.
Why am I spending so much time on this? The number of solar panels is crucial thing to figure out. 3 or 4 = 6 or 8. That is a big difference in the size of the rover. I need to get this right before I can move forward with the design.
While waiting for the solar test to succeed, I started working on my talk at Data Day. http://rtcevents.com/dataday/ I am talking about connecting environmental sensors to a database and then reporting that data using Tableau.
Here is a list of the technology I am thinking of showing.
- Raspberry Pi is configured as a database and HTTP server.
- Arduino ESP-8266s will measure the temperature and humidity, then using HTTP GET request to record the current readings to the database.
- Use Tableau to graph the results.
I think that by using these settings, I can have multiple ESP-8266 boards talking to a single Raspberry Pi. I will have full write-ups and how-tos on soon.