Hello,
I'm planning to build a digital compass using an HMC6352 magnetometer and an XLP PIC. My idea is to display the sensor value in degrees using a simple numeral LCD.
I though that it'd be fun to try to play with low-power stuff and so I decided to power the whole system using 2 or 4 calculator's solar cells. I bought a 2 calculator that has a solar cell on it. Measuring the open circuit voltage at full sun it gave me 2.38V (which is enough for my PIC but not for my sensor, it needs 2.7V at least), and the shortcircuit current was 2,03 mA (0,15 mA indoors)
Which is the best way to interconnect those solar cells with a coin battery? Or a capacitor? What's better? Or maybe it is impossible to power up a system with an LCD, a PIC and a sensor only with a few solar cells like those?
Does anyone have experience in using this solar cells? All kind of advice will be gratefully welcomed!
Regards,
Lîtus
PS: Excuse my grammar errors if any, I'm not English!
I'm planning to build a digital compass using an HMC6352 magnetometer and an XLP PIC. My idea is to display the sensor value in degrees using a simple numeral LCD.
I though that it'd be fun to try to play with low-power stuff and so I decided to power the whole system using 2 or 4 calculator's solar cells. I bought a 2 calculator that has a solar cell on it. Measuring the open circuit voltage at full sun it gave me 2.38V (which is enough for my PIC but not for my sensor, it needs 2.7V at least), and the shortcircuit current was 2,03 mA (0,15 mA indoors)
Which is the best way to interconnect those solar cells with a coin battery? Or a capacitor? What's better? Or maybe it is impossible to power up a system with an LCD, a PIC and a sensor only with a few solar cells like those?
Does anyone have experience in using this solar cells? All kind of advice will be gratefully welcomed!
Regards,
Lîtus
PS: Excuse my grammar errors if any, I'm not English!