Connecting a Solar Panel to Arduino

The project was designed for the possibility of connecting a solar panel with an Arduino board where the information is read in Max/MSP.

The inside lighting was the only source tried with this setup. If natural sunlight is used, a different data range will be present. In this design, a rating of 2V at 25mA is provided to the solar panel. If the voltage would be rated in excess of 5V, a solar panel should not be used. The Arduino board may get damaged if the solar panel is still used.

The data byte in the Arduino should be scaled if the values of the data will appear incorrect. The analog inputs of the read data have a 10-bit state although only 8 bits of information can be held by a single and serially printed value. The range of data with this particular solar panel uses a power coefficient of 0 < 6, for the night indoor lighting.

The hardware connections consist of a USB interface going to the Arduino. The Analog IN 0 of Arduino is connects to the solar panel positive terminal while the Arduino Ground to the negative terminal.

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