Solar Pi Platter
Available to buy at Tindie.
The Solar Pi Platter is a versatile expansion board for the Raspberry Pi Zero™ and Pi Zero W™ computers that provides power from a single-cell Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery, additional peripherals including analog inputs, PWM outputs, USB ports and optional hardwired ethernet. A real-time clock allows for scheduled power cycling. Dual charging sources support both low-impedance devices like common USB chargers and high-impedance devices like Solar Panels. The Solar Pi Platter allows the Pi Zero to be used in a wide variety of applications ranging from solar-powered remote data acquisition systems to battery-backed file servers.
Features
- Single-cell Lithium Ion battery management system supplying up to 10W power at 5V
- Low impedance charging input with Un-interruptible Power Supply (UPS) functionality
- High impedance charging input for use with solar or inductive power sources
- Real Time Clock with Alarm Power Control
- Battery charged power-up control
- Automatic Low battery power-down control
- Three high-speed USB expansion ports with per-port Transaction Translator
- Power control for two USB expansion ports
- Expansion port for RJ45 Ethernet jack
- Two analog inputs with configurable reference
- Two PWM outputs with configurable period and support for Servo mode
- Simple command interface via a USB serial port
- Programmable power-on default operation
- User-accessible EEPROM configuration settings
- Watchdog Timer
Applications
- File server or router with built-in battery backup
- Solar powered time-lapse camera
- Remote control and sense applications
- Embedded system control with battery backup
- Portable computing applications
Downloads and Links
The unix_applets directory from the github repository in an easy-to-download format in case you don't want to clone the entire repository. Includes talkpp, ppd and pp_power_mon.
GitHub repository with documentation, all software related to the Solar Pi Platter including utility software (talkpp, ppd and pp_power_mon), example scripts and applications.
The development of the project documented at hackaday.io.
The product was launched as a kickstarter project with a fellow Solid State Depot member, Mike Seiler.
Available at tindie.com.
Demonstration Projects
Portable 1024x600 pixel capacitive touch computer using Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and Pi Platter providing USB/battery power management. Build documented in the github repository.
Webcam based on motioneyeos with battery backup and pan/tilt servos. Build documented on hackster.io.
A solar powered time-lapse camera that can work in a remote location storing photographs to the Pi's Micro-SD card and using DietPi for reliability.
Simple remote control robot with video streaming built on an old Sparkfun base with parts I had laying around as a demo for the kickstarter campaign.