Solar Kit for Makers Giveaway (20 Winners!)
This contest is closed. Congrats to all the winners! Great to see all the exciting projects in the works including weather, water, garden monitoring,...
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Estimate an IoT Device’s Solar Irradiance
To run an IoT device year round from solar, you need to estimate how much power you will generate per day. This will vary based on geographic...
Solar Panel Tariffs Will Affect Small Solar Panels Too
The Trump Administration has imposed 30% tariffs on solar panels made outside of the United States. Those tariffs are targeting large modules for...
Monitoring Boreholes in Ethiopia
SweetSense is a Portland based company that builds remote monitoring for global development projects like water pumps, water filters, cookstoves and...
Solar Powered Gardening Robot on Kickstarter
Franklin Robotics launched the Kickstarter campaign for Tertill, the solar powered gardening robot. Created by the inventor of the Roomba, Tertill...
Spoondrift Launches Solar Powered Ocean Monitor
Spoondrift just launched their Spotter, a real-time ocean monitoring device. The Spotter collects ocean wave and surface current data and reports it...
Solar Charger Tutorial – Part 3
How (and why) do I store power? Sunlight is inconsistent and often nonexistent (think nightime) so storing power is important in many applications....
Solar Charger Tutorial – Part 2
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...
Solar Panels for Small Motors – An Intro
Solar Panels for Small Motors In this guide we look at the options you have when deciding on solar panels for small motors starting with how to...
Solar Powered LittleBits and Legos
LittleBits are a set of small electronic toys that allow kids (and adult engineers like myself) to easily build electrical inventions. There are...
Solar Panel Longevity Test: 2 Years In The Sun
Solar Panel Longevity: 2 Year Update Often our customers ask "How long can the panels stay in the sun before I should take them down?" Sure the...
Charge your Coast Flashlight from Solar Power
We are always excited to learn about new products that equip adventure-seekers in a more sustainable, green way. One of these trends that we've seen...
Solar Powered Water Quality Sensor
DIY Solar Powered Water Quality Sensor Every now and then while scrolling through tech blogs and DIY sensor projects, the Voltaic team is pleasantly...
Solar Powered Lego Tank
Our friends at PlayWell Tek are offering more summer programs for young engineers and this year, one of the projects includes a solar powered lego...
Connecting Solar Panel to New Lego Motor
We did a solar Lego car post a while back. It turns out the newer lego motors, the M-Motor 8883 and 8882 are a tiny bit more complicated than the...
Ikea Solar Phone Charger Hack
Nicola from Italy just sent in his hack of the IKEA SUNNAN solar lamp so that it can charge his electronics. He increases the power to the lamp's...
Combining Non-Matched Power Sources
There are times when you may find that you want to expand the power producing capabilities of your solar setup. This post will cover the basics of...
Solar Powered Lego Car
You know it is going to be a good day at work when you get a solar-powered Lego Car in the mail. The folks at Play-Well sent it to us after choosing...