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Franklin Robotics launched the Kickstarter campaign for Tertill, the solar powered gardening robot. Created by the inventor of the Roomba, Tertill patrols your garden looking for weeds and whacks them into...

Spoondrift just launched their Spotter, a real-time ocean monitoring device. The Spotter collects ocean wave and surface current data and reports it via satellite to a web dashboard. They also use our 2 Watt...

I paired up with Voltaic Systems to create a cellular, solar-powered water quality monitor. For phase one one of the project, I configured an Adafruit FONA to a water temperature probe and publishes the...

In this post, we show you how to build a solar-powered asset tracker for your bicycle or other important equipment using Adafruit FONA 808 and Freeboard. We will show you how to 3D print a custom case, wire...

Congratulations to Safecast for launching their Solarcast radiation and air quality monitor. Safecast formed in response to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. They built a radiation...

This week Voltaic helped install a solar powered dissolved oxygen monitor built by HabitatMap at the Living Dock in Newtown Creek. Newtown Creek is a Superfund site that borders Brooklyn and Queens. A once...

How to Charge a Microsoft Surface from an External Battery Pack Microsoft Surface and Surface Pros use proprietary charging connectors, which make it difficult if you are trying to charge your Surface on the...

Tutorial: Solar Power for Raspberry Pi This post will walk you though how to protect your Raspberry Pi while powering it from a solar-powered system, and provide some tips for reducing the power consumption....

A New Generation of Solar Backpacks We're starting off the new year with a new generation of solar backpacks, the Array and OffGrid by Voltaic. We use more devices than ever and they all need power, but...

How do you protect the battery? The goal of a charge circuit is to protect both the battery and your device. If you don't have charge protection, you can damage the cells on a battery or cause a fire. Please...

Solar for Rooftop Farms The Brooklyn Grange farms on rooftops all over New York City to promote sustainable living. We worked with them to bring solar to their rooftop office in the Navy Yard, powering...

  What actions can you take today to support solar energy? We spoke with the experts and here are four ideas: 1. Join Vote Solar Vote Solar is a non-profit organization we love that is working to...

Direct solar charging from a solar panel without any intermediate battery reduces complexity and weight of the system, but there are several challenges to making it work consistently across all phones. We...

How (and why) do I store power? Sunlight is inconsistent and often nonexistent (think nightime) so storing power is important in many applications. In addition, many electronics are expecting a constant,...

How much solar power am I generating? A solar panel does not do anything in isolation. It needs to be connected to something. That something is called a load. A load dissipates power and converts electrical...

How do Solar Chargers work? A solar charger is a portable power system made up of a solar panel and an external battery pack. For Voltaic Systems, we pair one of our high performance, monocrystalline solar...

How to DIY your own offgrid chicken coop lighting: Tom Mendise from Northeast Ohio has a 4'x4' chicken coop. He was looking for an offgrid chicken coop lighting system to keep hens laying as the days get...

Portable Power for Trail Runners Voltaic offers lightweight portable power for trail runners, no matter where the road takes you. When trail runners go for really long runs in the woods, they may need...