Solar Charger/Battery Level readings

I have a cheap solar charger like the one below and I was wondering if there is a way to integrate this into esphome to read the solar charge volage and battery readings

I am going to assume not as i can’t find anything via google so I will have to build something if i want this info

Just make a voltage divider with two resistors and read the voltage with analog pin.
For 12V battery, you could use 10k and 33k resistors.

Yeah a voltage divder is easy to do but if this controller already does these measuments I was just curious if there was an easy way to get them. I take it that this is not available via usb…

I might get another and take one apart ans see what ot is doing.

In the name of hacking. :+1: It takes 100x time to study the charger circuit than measuring the voltage.

I would be 100% sure the USB port is charge only, no data.

I wouldn’t take a risk even to try to connect that to my computer…

Or a battery. I had one that looked very similar to that which fried a battery.

How did it fry the battery?

It appears the regulator failed in short circuit and it applied full solar panel voltage to the battery. Happened within weeks of installation.

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In My search around to see if there was a way to do this with teh cheap controller I have I think I found something that will work, the Victron solar charger seems to fit what i want. And it is not that much more expensive.

Although not complicated to do voltage measurement this will give me a little more info and also some automation features, and make my circuit less complicated and therefore less likely for mistakes :slight_smile: :smiley:

An in light of certain comments I have seen about issue with the cheap controller, it might be a safer option :slight_smile:

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Good choice!

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