Solar powered gopigo

GoPiGo
1

Hello,

Anyone tried to add a small solar panel coupled to a battery pack to power the Gopigo.
What would be the proper solar panel size-power and battery.

Raspberry Pi Model B+ consumption is round 330ma (on 5v) https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#powerReqs
I have to add the consumption of the Gopigo controller card, the Wifi dongle, the camera, sensors, GPS (grove) and motors.

Then compute the size of the battery pack and then the solar panel
There are some information there, yet it’s for working 24hours, which is not my intent. From here http://juliansarokin.com/how-to-build-a-solar-powered-raspberry-pi/

If I do a high level evaluation at 5v 600 ma for the Gopigo = that’s 3W
Solar panel 2 times 6W: http://www.voltaicsystems.com/6-watt-panel
And battery pack of 3800 ma on 5V?

Any advices, experience with such setup?

Thanks a lot
JF

2

Hey JF, sounds like an awesome project! We would love to see how this goes.

You will definitely need to use a battery pack. Even if these can deliver 600mA at full sunlight, you’ll need to be sure that you can handle motor starts and stops; they will cause spikes in your power consumption.

Also, this is probably going to have to be an outdoors robot; typically inside lights can’t deliver the power you need to make such a device run.

Please let us know how this goes!

3

Sorry, and one more thing: you may want to look for a 9V solar panel supply. The 5V will not lend a lot of power to your motors, they’llbe very slow at best. You can damage your Pi and the GPG if you run it off of USB power. So be careful about this.