In the never ending quest to diminish power consumption of a solar powered standalone IoT device, I was wondering if RAK would consider an improved Solar charging circuit or maybe a new solar module using something like the BQ25185.
The TP4054 is rather power hungry when compared to the BQ25185, it works worse in low light conditions and lacks some safety features. I personally believe there is room for a slightly more expensive but all around better solar charging solution.
It does not have to be the BQ25185 but I am not familiar with all the IC’s currently available so I picked that one for the sake of this discussion.
Any thought and suggestions welcome and if RAK is listening glad to have a followup discussion.
There is no defined roadmap yet on a more feature rich solar charging IC.
As for solar charging, it requires flexibility because scenarios greatly varies depending on the total load, solar power input, battery types and configuration (1S, 2S, etc.), overall size of the device, deployment location and other factors. Having an external one for users is more versatile and provides flexibility to them.
Some though, use the TP4054 by default if it fits their use case.
Thanks for your reply. My question was not so much about being more feature rich and was more related to power saving. Usually if running on solar power it means we want our project to be as power efficient as possible. This should include the circuit which provides us with the solar charging capabilities. The fact that the BQ25185 offers more in other areas as well is just a bonus at this stage.
@ssozonoff , actually we are using a new charger IC for WisMesh Baseboard - SGM4152. This has extra features unlike the basic TP4054 that just merely charge the Li-Ion battery. We can wait for @beegee to give details on what we use for charging IC on the next version of baseboard. I forgot that we already have V2 design.
I am not familiar with the SGM4152 but it does not seem to be a solar specific charging IC and as such does not really seem ideal for optimised solar charging.