Adafruit Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer Charger - v2

Make your projects to go green this summer with this USB/Solar Lithium Ion Polymer Battery charger! This charger is a very unique design, perfect for outdoor projects, or DIY iPod chargers. Adafruit spent over a year testing and tinkering with this charger to come up with a plug and play solution to charging batteries with the sun and they have a great soloution.

Easy to use! Pick up any 3.7V/4.2V LiIon batterie, and a 6V solar panel. Plug the battery into the BATT port using a 2-pin JST cable and the solar panel into the DC jack using a 2.1mm adapter cable Put the solar panel outside (and keep the battery out of the sun, it needs to be kept cool!) to start charging. You can power another project like a Mintyboost at the same time by connecting to the LOAD output port

This carefully designed charger is designed specifically for solar charging, and will automatically draw the most current possible from the panel in any light condition! Even thought it isn't a 'true' MPPT (max power point tracker), it has near-identical performance without the additional cost of a buck-converter. Adafruit have a detailed tutorial on how to use this charger that includes a design document explaining how it all works.

Comes with an assembled charger board, a 2-pin JST cable that will fit into either the BATT or LOAD ports, and a large stabilization capacitor that must be installed in your finished project.  This is the improved V2 design that is a little more compact, has nicer mounting holes, and a 2.1mm DC jack compared to the original design.

• 3.7V/4.2V Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery charger
• Charge with 5-6V DC, USB or 6V solar panel!
• Too dark out? Use a USB mini-B cable or a 5V DC adapter
• Automatic charging current tracking for high efficiency use of any wattage solar panel
• Use any 6V solar panel
• Three color indicator LEDs - Power good, Charging and Done
• Low Battery Indicator (fixed at 3.1V) with LED output
• Set for 500mA max charge rate, can be adjusted from 50mA up to 1A by soldering in a resistor
• Will always draw the most current possible from a solar cell - up to the max charge rate!
• Smart load sharing automatically uses the input power when available, to keep battery from constantly charging/discharging
• Temperature monitoring of battery by soldering in a 10K NTC thermistor (not included) - suggested for outdoor projects where the battery may get hot (50°C) or cold (0°C).

NOTE: For use with Lipoly/LiIon batteries only! Other batteries may have different voltage, chemistry, polarity or pinout. Does not come with a Lipoly battery or solar panel. This product is designed for use with solar panels from Adafruit, we cannot guarantee this will work with solar panels purchased elsewhere.