#Solar powered projects
wraith stone
That’s a very good point! Which leads me to ask another question, mostly to better understand how it works: when the panel isn’t emitting full power, am I going to se a reduction in both voltage and current?
I’m going to look for sons more detail on how the output power changes during the day.
I guess I’ll need to size everything for the very worst case of short, rainy winter days where I could get very little power if any at all
round echo
You'll tend to see a reduction of both voltage and current. Some solar cells are rated with an "open circuit voltage" (the voltage with no load, since no current is flowing, the power output is zero), and a "short circuit current (since no voltage is developed, the power output is also zero). Those cells can never produce that voltage and that current at the same time. Fancy circuits will use "maximum power point tracking" to adjust the load to extract the maximum usable power from solar cells for whatever the current conditions are.
wraith stone
And going back to the initial question I had, is there any rule of thumb on what I could use the Round Solar Panel Skill Badge for?
The product description says “You can use this to power small, low power projects with a small low power microcontroller or chip and maybe an LED.” Without knowing what they mean with “small, low power” I’m struggling to understand when it would be a good fit.
To give you some context, I’d like to play with solar power and the badges are so unexpensive that I’m tempted to grab some to play with them and I’m trying to understand what kind of projects I could do with them so I can decide if that’s the product for me or whether I need some cells with a bigger output
round echo
What they say there ("small low power microcontroller and maybe an LED") sums it up fairly well. You have a few volts and a few milliamperes to play with, that isn't going to power a lot.