The schematics are done; Salvius is now ready to start charging the small battery that powers the Arduino micro-controller in his head so that the robot can operate longer between chargings. One of the issues that occurred in the design of the solar battery charger was that I did not want to overload the Arduino by connecting a battery as well as an array of solar panels. To solve this I added a small toggle switch (SW) that allows the battery to be switched from powering the Arduino to be charged. Although this switch over has to done manually for now it could easily be made an automatic process by adding a DPDT (double-pole double-throw) relay in the place of the switch. The schematic bellow shows the layout for this circuit. J1 is a plug that is connected to the solar panel array, J2 is a plug connected to the Arduino's power jack, SW is the switch, and B1 is the rechargeable battery.
At this point the solar panels together produce a total of 12.01 volts in direct sunlight. This seems to be more than enough to keep the 9.5 volt battery pack fully charged.
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| Solar panel array to test battery charger. |