Solar iPod Charger

Posted on Feb 5, 2014

A solar charger for an iPod is no more difficult than making our Solar battery charger. Built in iPod batteries are 3. 7 Volts with the capacity (measured in mAh) dependent on the type of iPod - e. g. 1, 200mAh for a 2nd Gen, 850mAh for a 3rd Gen, 500mAh for the Mini iPod, and 400mAh for the Nano. In our instructions for making a solar battery charger for AA and AAA

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batteries we made a current limiting circuit. Because the iPod range has batteries of a wide selection of capacities, our solar iPod charger is instead voltage limited. Since iPods can be charged via a USB port with a fixed 5 Volts DC, this is the voltage we will use. Please scroll down to the bottom of this article for details on commercially available Solar iPod Chargers if you are not interested in finding out how to make your own. To make our iPod solar charger we used a 250mA 6 Volt Solar Panel (available in the REUK Shop ). Even in the brightest sunshine the voltage is not excessively above that of the iPod battery, and the current is plenty enough to charge the battery in a few hours in bright conditions (even in the UK!). A blocking diode should be used (in the positive solar panel lead) to prevent the iPod battery from slowly draining at night if it is still connected to the panel. Unforunately this results in up to 0. 7 Volts being lost as heat in the diode, so it can be left out if you prefer to have a faster charger which will charge the battery in lower light conditions. Since our desired charging voltage is 5 Volts, we see that ideally R2 would be 270 * (5/1. 25) -1) = 810 Ohms. This is not a standard resistor size, however we had an 820 Ohm resistor which should result in an output voltage of 5. 05 Volts. Wiring up the above circuit on a prototyping breadboard with a 270 Ohm R1 resistor, and 820 Ohm R2...

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