{"id":2244,"date":"2026-06-03T14:21:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/?p=2244"},"modified":"2026-06-25T12:40:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T19:40:58","slug":"creeping-featurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/creeping-featurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Creeping Featurism :-)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"2244\" class=\"elementor elementor-2244\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-cfbdac2 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"cfbdac2\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-e-type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-7a76fb7\" data-id=\"7a76fb7\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-319b690 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"319b690\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>It&#8217;s now very apparent to me that it would be cool (indeed, necessary) to monitor the charging current and power supplied by the solar cell array.\u00a0 It&#8217;s become necessary since I&#8217;ve found that the solar cells I&#8217;ve been using can&#8217;t simultaneously charge the LiPo cells <strong>AND<\/strong> power the weather station at the same time.\u00a0 I was wondering what was going on; even in full sun and charging current on the TP4056 cut down to 500mA instead of 1A, when I plug in the weather station, the charging LED goes extinguishes or flashes, and eventually the LiPo runs out of juice. I <strong>could<\/strong> replace the red and blue onboard LEDs on the TP4056 module with opto-isolators and connect them to the MCP23008 GPIO expander I&#8217;m using since I have spare I\/O pins.\u00a0 If I was designing my own battery management system (BMS), I would do just that: ditch the power-consuming LEDs and use opto-isolators for monitoring battery status.\u00a0 <strong>BUT<\/strong>, I&#8217;ve been using Gemini AI and have found a way to use the data from a newly added INA219 power monitor IC to determine full charge in software.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><p>I&#8217;m also rethinking the solar panel; instead of two 6-volt panels in parallel, I bought five 5-volt 200mA panels from Amazon and I&#8217;m connecting these in parallel on a common bus.\u00a0 That&#8217;s 5 volts or more in direct sunlight and a possible 1,000mA capability.\u00a0 That SHOULD be more than enough to power the weather station PCB AND charge the LiPo battery.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll post pics of the new solar &#8220;array&#8221; and results.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now very apparent to me that it would be cool (indeed, necessary) to monitor the charging current and power supplied by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,25,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-internet-of-things","category-weather-instruments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2244"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unixwizardry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}