#Cute battery buddy external charger full#

Since I was actively increasing the load to stress the supplies, it folded back to a lower voltage to gracefully handle the excessive load without bursting into flames.

In a charging application, that's the point at which it would have settled in and charged the battery. You can clearly see the point at about 240mA where the Sunny Buddy could no longer safely draw more current from the solar cell. For a sort of baseline comparison, note that the output of the bench supply, the battery, and the Sunny Buddy are pretty flat. The chart compares output voltage versus load current for the five sources listed above: in short, how much current each is capable of providing.

#Cute battery buddy external charger full#

Power Supply BehaviorĬonsider the first part of that last sentence: 'as much current as it is capable of drawing from its power supply.' I've collected some data from five different power supplies: a 2000 mAh LiPo battery, a bench supply, our small solar cell, our large solar cell, and the Sunny Buddy attached to the small cell in full Colorado sunlight (albeit in midwinter). An ideal battery charger will provide as much current to the battery as it is capable of drawing from its power supply, but no more than the battery can handle. Battery chargers monitor the current flowing into the battery and limit it to some set value, chosen to prevent damage to the battery. How Batteries Are Chargedīattery charging is a current dependent action, not a voltage dependent action. Why does that matter? What makes it worth having in a circuit? The answers lay ahead. The Sunny Buddy is a maximum power point transfer (MPPT) solar charger.