Although the project was accepted a couple of weeks ago, I have already finished building the solar-powered Efika. Now, I set up the web server on the solar-powered Efika and am measuring the temperature and humidity of the room by using it. In this blog, therefore, I will write about the details of the project what I have done.

Solar-powered Efika:

Actually, I have never seen the small-scale solar-powered PC. If it is realized, it provides us extending the possibility of solar-powered embedded systems. The Efika features of interest is very low power consumption, around 6 W at the operation without monitor. It is sufficient power consumption in order to realize the solar-powered system. I planned to build the measurement equipment with small-scale photovoltaics which is portable, self-powered, and can be used anywhere. Since the Efika can be used as a PC, it means to be able to perform complicated processing easily, which is difficult to be constructed by general microcontroller that has only several I/Os and A/Ds. The measurement equipment is just one example of solar-powered Efika, there might be other applications that dramatically improve the efficiency in our eco-life.

Figure 1 shows a block diagram of the solar-powered Efika. The major parts of the system are;
- Solar battery (12V, 1.5A)
- Battery charge controller
- Analog meter (optional)
- Efika
- Keyboard, Monitor (for debug)

Figure 1 A block diagram of the solar-powered Efika