Good morning,
A client wants to install a Solar panel in the BlueBoat so to help charge the batteries during a Survey. Wondering if any has previous experience with this.
As usual, aSolar panel needs a regulator to charge a battery… So I came up with the following question:
How to balance the Ion 4S batteries? As I understood these regulators doesn’t have a balanced port…
Thank you
K. Regards
Victor J.
QSTAR
Hi @QSTAR -
You do indeed need to balance the batteries, especially when charging! I’d recommend a balance PCB connected to the battery harness, which allows all the cells to be balanced together (as long as their individual balance connectors are connected!)
You also need a solar charge controller that can be configured to charge the 16.8 max voltage, and not the standard 12/24V setpoint of cheaper controllers. This unit from Victron can be configured with a USB cable, and setup to charge to appropriate voltage.
We plan to have a guide on this process someday, happy to support directly int he meantime!
Hi Tony, thanks for your reply and information. That Balance PCB that you suggest; Must be connected directly to the “Charge Cable Connection” in the BlueBoat (to the 5 pin Molex), right?
Ok about the Controllerç
Thanks
Hi @QSTAR -
Yes, that balance board is connected to any of the balance ports on the battery wiring harness. All batteries in the BlueBoat should have their balance connectors connected as well!
Here are some settings I’ve used with the Victron solar charge controller and the 4S Blue Robotics battery:
Thank you Tony, interesting!
Hi @QSTAR and @tony-white ,
I am looking to do something very similar (down to the same panel I think). Any chance there is some documentation on this somewhere?
Thanks!
Jeremy Wenger
jwenger@mit.edu
Hi,
I am very interested in doing it also. My project aims to deploy a blue boat for long durations in the open ocean using solar panels, the T500 self-righting mechanism and a camera.
I would love to hear your views on how to attach the solar panel to the boat and the strength needed to resist high wind. Have you designed a custom 3D printed mount ?
@tony-white regarding your prototype with the 130W solar panel, starlink and the T500, I am very curious to hear more about the power loads and if the the panel is enough to power everything ?
Hi @renanm and @jwenger -
Thanks for your interest! I’ll work on publishing the 3D printed parts I use to mount the solar panel, in combination with some aluminum U-channel from the hardware store. I’ll write up a standalone forum post with details on the SCC setup and balancing - expect this within 7-10 days!
What I don’t have yet are test results and parameters to enable continuous operations - I think a load-out of 4 batteries will likely be necessary, and I’ve not had a chance to test with that configuration yet.
@renanm what camera are you planning to use, and will it be above or below water?
The 130 watt panel makes 60-110 watts in full Hawaii sun, but only for ~6-8 hours in a day when the sun is high. I’ve tested a 180W panel that’s a bit larger, but hoping it won’t prove necessary as it may interfere with the T500 flipper arm. The StarLink uses about 30 watts, and the boat hotel load is ~5 to 8 watts (Mikrotik radio disabled) - this is a bit high for continuous operation, so turning the starlink on and off based on power generation or time of day may prove necessary.
Thank you very much for doing that, that’s great to hear.
My aim is to have a camera on a blue boat film offshore wind turbines and take metocean data and remain in the offshore wind farm for long periods.
The camera would gimbal and zoom to image multiple parts of the turbines for diagnostic purposes. At some point, this will entail dynamically updating the waypoint navigation through vision based processing in order to take specific POV and for collision avoidance.
I plan as a first approach to mount the camera on the mounting arm of the T500.
The IP waterproof camera you suggested in this blogpost seems to be great blueboat-camera-installation : the SplashDrone 4 GC3-S Waterproof 3-Axis Gimbal 4K Camera
As a first approach I plan on using a random USB action camera (h264) and work on the software, and then decide which camera fits best (low light capabilities, thermal … ) .
Regarding power generation, given that I am designing a system for the North Sea sun, continuous operations is obviously not feasible. I need to figure out by testing the kind of power generation I can get and design my system around that. I will probably try to fit as big of a solar panel as possible.
The first prototype’s aim are thus to be able to loiter autonomously at sea and at set times every day be able to be directly controlled through the starlink.
Hi @renanm -
Very cool application! I would be skeptical that a camera, even mounted on a gimbal, would be stable enough to zoom in any significant distance and produce a stable picture.
That said, we’re working on that 4k SwellPro camera integration as a Reef product - it is not as plug and play as you might hope, as it uses a special connector that requires pogo pints to interface with…
Hey @tony-white, do you have any updates on the SCC setup and the 3d printed parts ?
thank you in advance for your help !
Renan
Hi @renanm - sorry for the wait, had some higher priority tasks come up.
Please give this a try and let us know how it goes!
Thank you for sharing this !
I am ordering the parts and will test it. i’ll definitely keep you updated.
I have tested the Starlink integration kit you provided. I will try to come up with a way of mechanically integrating the Starlink, the solar panel and the anti-flipping T500 to make the whole assembly sturdier. I plan on linking with a horizontal square tubing the two square tubing for the Starlink and the T500. This square tubing will go underneath the solar panel and be attached to it providing additional support.
If I understand correctly we lose one battery “spot” with the solar build as the SCC is connected to one male XT90 and the balance PCB is connected to the Molex 5pin.
We don’t actually connect anything to the Charge Cable Connection.
If there are 6 4S (c1, c2, c3, c4) batteries, the 6 c1 cells will act as one big C1 cell, 6 c2 as one big C2 etc. Thus the balance PCB balances the 4 big C1 C2 C3 C4 cells together ?
Hi @renanm -
I conducted flip-over tests with starlink, solar panel, and T500 thruster all mounted without issue, not sure what would need to be sturdier? Besides replacing 3D printed parts with machined or from some other fabrication process…
You’re correct, you want C1-C4 of all 6 batteries to all be in parallel, and balanced so they all have the same voltage together.
