Solar Test #9 Called

Solar Test #9 was called due to rain. Solar Test #10 did not work. Solar test #9 ran for 20 days, so I call it a success. Now time for the next test and on to Rover design work. It seems that these little computers and the chargers don’t like water.

For reference, Solar Test #10 was a single 18650 battery and solar panel with the Raspberry Pi Zero W shutting down at night. The single 18650 cell and panel could not keep up. There was also a sync error with the M0 and the Pi that caused issues with the shutdown and startup when there was not enough power.

Next up: Solar/Heat Test 1

Solar/Heat Test #1 may fail because I am switching out the Raspberry Pi Zero W with a Raspberry Pi 3B. Instead of transmitting a bunch of photos to Mission Control for processing, Raspberry Pi 3B would have the processing power to do the work on the rover. Hopefully, there will be enough power to charge and run the 3B during the day, at night the Pi will power down. Another change will be the replacement of the Arduino Pro Mini with an Adafruit Trinket M0. The M0 is much easier to program remotely, and if I can pull it off will be worth the trouble. I am getting hooked on CircuitPython and simply replacing a file on the M0 is much easier than compiling and transmitting the new code to the Arduino.

The entire unit will be placed in a 3D-printed tub from the Rover Version 1 STL files. I printed out two of the end tubs with lids and will place the lot in there. I will also add temperature sensors to the test. The camera will be set inside the unit. I have been using the camera to monitor the chargers and now the lights on the M0. Later I will switch from an M0 to an M4 to monitor the charge and the voltage of each battery and manage startup and shutdown. Need to learn how I want to transfer the data from the M4 to the Pi first, thinking either files or I2C.

I am looking forward to having more computing power in the rover. I am more excited about the challenge of updating the rover remotely to do more things while it’s out there exploring.