Description
Adafruit USB/DC/Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer Charger
NOTE: This product is only designed for use with solar panels sold at the Adafruit store. We cannot guarantee this will work with solar panels purchased elsewhere. Please purchase this kit and panels from Adafruit to ensure optimized functionality! Using larger panels, either higher voltage or current output, could also damage the charger. A 2.1mm adapter cable is also required to adapt a solar panel to the DC power jack.
Make your projects to go green this summer with our specialized USB/Solar Lithium Ion Polymer Battery charger! This charger is a very unique design, perfect for outdoor projects, or DIY iPod chargers. We’ve spent over a year testing and tinkering with this charger to come up with a plug and play solution to charging batteries with the sun and we’re really pleased with what we ended up with.
Easy to use! Pick up any of our many 3.7V/4.2V LiIon batteries, and a 6V solar panel. Plug the battery into the BATT port using a 2-pin JST cable and the solar panel into the DC jack using a 2.1mm adapter cable Put the solar panel outside (and keep the battery out of the sun, it needs to be kept cool!) to start charging. You can power another project like a Mintyboost at the same time by connecting to the LOAD output port
Our carefully designed charger is designed specifically for solar charging, and will automatically draw the most current possible from the panel in any light condition! Even thought it isn’t a ‘true’ MPPT (max power point tracker), it has near-identical performance without the additional cost of a buck-converter. Our detailed tutorial on how to use this charger includes a design document explaining how it all works.
For use with Adafruit Lipoly/LiIon batteries only! Other batteries may have different voltage, chemistry, polarity or pinout.
Comes with an assembled charger board, a 2-pin JST cable that will fit into either the BATT or LOAD ports, and a large stabilization capacitor that must be installed in your finished project. Does not come with a Lipoly battery or solar panel but we do have tons available in the shop that work quite well. We have updated the design to be a little more compact, have nicer mounting holes, and a 2.1mm DC jack.
