Hey guys,
I recently purchased a few of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Car-Smal...ords=solar+car
It's a simple circuit where the solar panel is connected directly to the motor. In the default setup, the solar panel only provides enough power to run the motor under direct sunlight.
My question is:
Is there a way of adding components (maybe a capacitor) to allow the solar panel to store energy in the component for a time, until it reaches an arbitrary power level and then supplies the motor with enough power to run for a short time? The behavior of the car would be to sit and charge for 10-15 seconds, and run for maybe 3-4 seconds at a time.
My reason for doing so would be to allow the car to work under much weaker lighting conditions.
Is something like this even possible? I have a decent amount of experience building already designed circuits, but for direct applications like this I'm in a little over my head.
Thanks for any help/suggestions!
I recently purchased a few of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Car-Smal...ords=solar+car
It's a simple circuit where the solar panel is connected directly to the motor. In the default setup, the solar panel only provides enough power to run the motor under direct sunlight.
My question is:
Is there a way of adding components (maybe a capacitor) to allow the solar panel to store energy in the component for a time, until it reaches an arbitrary power level and then supplies the motor with enough power to run for a short time? The behavior of the car would be to sit and charge for 10-15 seconds, and run for maybe 3-4 seconds at a time.
My reason for doing so would be to allow the car to work under much weaker lighting conditions.
Is something like this even possible? I have a decent amount of experience building already designed circuits, but for direct applications like this I'm in a little over my head.
Thanks for any help/suggestions!