NEW PRODUCT – USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger – v1.0

Usbdcsolarcharger Lrg

NEW PRODUCT – USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger – v1.0. Make your projects to go green this summer with our specialized USB/Solar Lithium Ion Polymer Battery charger! This charger is a very unique design, perfect for outdoor projects, or DIY iPod chargers. We’ve spent over a year testing and tinkering with this charger to come up with a plug and play solution to charging batteries with the sun and we’re really pleased with what we ended up with.

Easy to use! Pick up any of our many 3.7V/4.2V LiIon batteries, and a 6V solar panel. Plug the battery into the BATT port using a 2-pin JST cable and the solar panel into the DC jack using a 2.1mm terminal block adapter. Put the solar panel outside (and keep the battery out of the sun, it needs to be kept shaded!) to start charging. You can power another project like a Mintyboost at the same time by connecting to the LOAD output port

Usbdcsolarchargerminty Lrg
Battery and MintyBoost not included.

Our carefully designed charger is designed specifically for solar charging, and will automatically draw the most current possible from the panel in any light condition!

This isn’t a true MPPT (max power point tracker), but has similar performance. Our detailed tutorial on how to use this charger includes a design document explaining how it all works. Please read all of the documentation before purchasing.

Comes with an assembled and tested charger board, a large capacitor (you will need to solder it in however you would like it to sit), a JST 2-pin cable for connecting up a battery or load, and for a limited time a bonus 2.1mm adapter cable that will convert the small 1.4mm jack to a 2.1mm jack.

  • 3.7V/4.2V Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery charger
  • Charge with 5-6V DC, USB or solar panel!
  • Too dark out? Use a USB mini-B cable or a 5V DC adapter
  • Automatic charging current tracking for high efficiency use of any wattage solar panel
  • Use any 5-6V solar panel (6V seems to work best)
  • Three color indicator LEDs – Power good, Charging and Done
  • Low Battery Indicator (fixed at 3.1V) with LED output
  • Set for 500mA max charge rate, can be adjusted from 50mA up to 1A by soldering in a resistor
  • Will always draw the most current possible from a solar cell – up to the max charge rate!
  • Smart load sharing automatically uses the input power when available, to keep battery from constantly charging/discharging
  • Temperature monitoring of battery by soldering in a 10K NTC thermistor (not included) – suggested for outdoor projects where the battery may get hot (50°C) or cold (0°C).

Again, this isn’t a true MPPT (max power point tracker), but has similar performance. Our detailed tutorial on how to use this charger includes a design document explaining how it all works and why we designed this product.

In stock and shipping now!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



5 Comments

  1. I just made something EXACTLY like this (well, without the automatic current tracking, that’s really nifty, dammit now I want one) with a solar panel I built myself, and your lipo charger.

  2. That is a huge capacitor. 4700 uF. Wow. It seems that the maxim of “when in doubt, put on more decoupling capacitors” holds true here.

  3. hj, the capacitor may be a bit overspecced but if you look at any kind of solar charging system of reasonable complexity there’s a massive cap to stabilize the panel. as we do more testing, future revisions may have a smaller cap.

  4. I wasn’t questioning the design, I’m sure you specced it for a reason, and I would hope I’m the last person to question one of your designs. I’ve just been helping high school students debug mobile robots for 2 weeks, and it seems that when all hope of making their control boards work is lost, adding another decoupling capacitor (up to 1000uF or so) seems to fix the problem. Gotta love the noise injected by two 3-amp stepping motors.

  5. Very nice. I made something similar for my iPhone just over a year ago using Minty Boost. Still working today. http://electricprojects.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/solar-iphone-charger/

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.