Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Weekend Projects – Solar Cricket”.
Hi, I’m Ken den Meade editorial director with make this project we’re going to combine two simple ideas to make something fun and admittedly, a little annoying. We’Ll start with a classic cricket. Noisemaker, solar battery charger add an Arduino and power it all with solar panels along the way we’ll learn how to program the Arduino for minimal power consumption, solar panels create electricity, of course, we’ll take that raw power and add a battery charging circuit to top off a Nine volt nickel metal hydride battery that powers the Arduino, but you can also use solar panels to detect ambient light so in this project, we’ll also use them as sensors to trigger the Arduino to perform a task when it detects that night has fallen. What tasks do you ask by making cricket noises your solar cricket will draw its power from the Sun during the day and then use that power at night to do it stuff, it’s a great project for pranking, your friends. Once you understand how the solar cricket works, you can modify the project and take advantage of the solar battery charging circuitry and optimize code for your next Arduino project to make this project you’re going to need these parts which are all available at RadioShack. So, with one quick trip, you’ll be ready to build your solar circuit you’ll also need these tools start the project by drilling two holes in the enclosure, lid and feeding the wires for the solar panels through them, then we’ll secure the panels with hot glue. Now we can solder the two wires from each solar panel to a piece of prototyping board or perf board, as shown insert the voltage regulator into the center of the board and then solder. The 10 ohm resistor to the voltage output pin run a jumper wire from the other end of the resistor. To one side of one of the potentiometers then connect the wiper terminal and the remaining terminal together using one end of a jumper wire strip about two inches of insulation from the other end of this jumper wire and return it to the corner of the board route. The exposed wire back to the voltage regulator and solder it to the adjust pin this wire will become the power rail of our circuit next cut and strip a small jumper wire and connect the input pin on the voltage regulator to the positive side of the solar Panels now we’ll cut and strip a black jumper wire and attach it to the board, as shown when the exposed wire underneath the board to the negative side of the solar panels, this will become our ground rail of the circuit solder. The other end of this jumper to one side of the remaining potentiometer, insert the diode into the board, as shown and solder, the positive leg to the ground, rail and bend the negative leg so that it can be soldered to the junction between both solar panels.
A second jumper wire will connect the negative leg of the diode to the other side of the potentiometer finally solder, a female header, jumper wire to the wiper Center terminal of the potentiometer. The final component on the board is a capacitor which will smooth out power fluctuations from the panels and extend battery life solder. The positive lead of the capacitor to the positive output of the panel’s and the negative lead to the ground rail. The negative side of the capacitor is marked by a black stripe now solder, female header jumpers to the power, rail and ground rail of the circuit. These will supply power to the Arduino, then solder. The positive and negative leads of the battery connector to the power and ground rails of the circuit as well.
Now that we’ve built the charging circuit, we need to adjust the potentiometers so that the voltage and current being output are within proper ranges, place the circuit in direct, sunlight and measure. The current produced by using a multimeters negative probe to ground and positive probe to power. Rail, since nickel metal hydride batteries charge best when you give them 10 % of the battery rating in current and the battery we are using is a 170 milliamp hour battery. We just have to dial the current down to 17 milliamp or slightly less next measure. The voltage being output at the second potentiometers wiper terminal, the Arduino, can only handle 5.5 volt, so we’ll adjust this potentiometer until it reads about 5 volts, while in direct sunlight to install the Arduino, simply connect the power and ground jumpers to the ground and VN pins.
On the Arduino then connect the header jumper from the voltage potentiometer to analog 0 input, finally, connect the piezo buzzer to the Arduino solder to female header, jumper wires to the black and red wires on the piezo and connect them to ground and digital pin 3. On the Arduino, the battery will act as a reserve to catch any unused charge being generated by the charging circuit when the Arduino needs power, mostly at night time. The battery kicks in and supplies the electricity before the code will compile.
You will need to install the G Lib library, this library powers down most of the Arduino when not being used to keep the battery consumption as low as possible, the link to the library and how to install it can be found on the solar cricket project page. The code is really well commented and works as follows. At the start of the routine, it is assumed to be daylight if the Arduino reads: 5 low light levels in a row, it will switch to night mode and call the chirp routine a fixed number of times.
Once the Arduino reads: 5 high light levels, it will switch back to day mode. All the delay routines use the low power G live library to conserve battery power. There is a line in the code that reads: define debug logging do serial logging if, in debug mode, it’s used by the Arduino to output, debug messages on the serial port, it’s really useful for testing, but once you’re happy with the code, you should delete this line Of code to save additional power after testing the circuit operation mount the Arduino, the circuit board, the piezo battery clip and the potentiometers, with a dab of hot glue and close up the enclosure.
Depending on the size of your case, you might need to cut the potentiometer shafts a little shorter. Now all you have to do is set your solar cricket somewhere in the like protected from moisture. When the Sun Goes Down, the code will recognize the following voltage from the solar panels and start the chirping routine, just like real crickets. If you’d like to hide the piezo buzzer in the house as a practical joke, just drill a small hole in the enclosure and extend the piezo wires about 10 to 20 feet, leave the enclosure outside and pass the wires through a window or opening and stash the Buzzer somewhere hard to find then try adjusting the frequency values and trip delays in the code to make it even harder to find, have fun, and let us know how your build goes by sharing your experience on the project. Page .