Joey Castillo, of Oddly Particular Objects, has accomplished the design of a Feather-compatible improvement board constructed with photo voltaic power harvesting initiatives firmly in thoughts: the low-power Microchip SAM L21-based Photo voltaic Feather Specific.
“I would resolved on not designing any new devices this yr,” Castillo wrote when unveiling the at-the-time unnamed Feather-format improvement board in August final yr. “However I’ve a few solar-oriented issues on the horizon, and after [Microchip] SAM L21 low-power assessments proved simply too promising, I could not assist myself.”
For those who’re seeking to construct a solar-harvesting challenge on a decent energy price range, the Photo voltaic Feather Specific could do the trick. (📷: Joey Castillo)
On the time, all that was obtainable was a render of the board’s design — however now it lastly exists in the true world too. “Generally issues take longer than you count on,” Castillo says of the delay between preliminary design and dealing board. “The essential factor is that you just do them. Anyway: meet the Photo voltaic Feather Specific. Regardless of all the pieces I’ve happening — and I’ve loads — I managed to construct this right now.”
The Photo voltaic Feather Specific is, because the title implies, a Feather-format improvement board constructed with photo voltaic power harvesting in thoughts. It makes use of Microchip’s SAM L21 system-on-chip, providing what the corporate calls “picoPower Expertise” with assist for full performance at working voltages right down to 1.62V and a speedy wake time from deep sleep modes. That provides the board a single Arm Cortex-M0+ core working at as much as 48MHz, 40kB of static RAM (SRAM), and as much as 256kB of embedded flash storage.
Castillo confirmed off the bottom design again in August final yr, however has solely simply constructed the primary bodily board. (📷: Joey Castillo)
For energy, there is a high-efficiency Torex Semi XC6220 voltage regulator with SMA diodes to robotically swap between USB energy and a photo voltaic enter relying on which is greater — then feed the incoming energy to a battery via a Texas Devices BQ24074 administration chip.
“I am pledged to [do] two public artwork installations within the close to future,” Castillo explains of the explanation for lastly bringing the idea design into the true world, “and this board goes to drive them.”
Extra data is accessible on Castillo’s Mastodon post; on the time of writing, he had made no public dedication to a full-scale manufacturing run.
