Solar Powered Battle Symet - BEAM Style

Step 4 Assemble the Circuit

Now it's time to solder all the electronic parts to the solar cell. Our MSE solar cells have the circuit for building a MSE right on the back, and it makes robot assembly really easy and fast!

Look on the solar cell's back, where you'll find a printed circuit board (PCB). You can see part numbers that label where to install the various components on the solar cell. Make sure the are installed exactly as shown, with the parts in the right location, and facing the right way!

Comments

[lharvey619]

I have been playing around with these 3733 solar cells for a while now, and think I found a better way to use them with a 1381c solar engine.

See, the 1381c is set to trigger at 2.6Vdc or so.. but the 3733 cell is a 6 volt cell! This means that the top 3v are never used, as the solar engine oscillates between 1vdc an 2.6vdc (typically), so really all you need is a 3v solar cell.

What great about the 3733 6v cell is that, as you notice on the front, it is 2 cells strung together... meaning each half is a 3v cell!

The 3733 is rated at (looking it up)6.7V, and 15ma, so, that means each half is 3.35v, and 7.5 ma. more or less. I bring this up because if you do the following mod to the chip, it will be a 3v cell, with TWICE the amperage supply! This means that a supercap should charge up faster.

The modification you need to do is pretty simple to explain even without pictures embedded. Look at the picture above of the back of the board. Along the right side is the long strip that connects the two cells together. If you scrape away at the strip somewhere in the middle, you can break that circuit by scraping away at it until the thin copper strip underneath is gone (you dont have to do the whole strip, just break its connection completely)

Then, make an X with two wires, connecting each opposite corner together. and thats it! you now have 2 cells in parallel instead of series, and now it is acting like 2 cells teaming up.

One problem that I have noticed with doing this though is this mod hampers low light operation... as a 3v cell in low light is a .7v cell... whereas a 6 volt cell in low light is still roughly around the 2.6v needed for the solar engine to still work.