Open-Source Solar Modules

As the price of solar panels continues to fall, more and more places find it economical to build solar farms that might not have been able to at higher prices. High latitude locations, places with …

Wireless Data Connections Through Light

When wired networking or data connections can’t be made, for reasons of distance or practicality, various wireless protocols are available to us. Wi-Fi is among the most common, at least as f…

The Mysterious Case Of The Disappearing Inventor

When combing through the history of technological innovation, we often find that pinning down a given inventor of something can be tricky. [Foeke Postma] at Bellingcat shows us that even the Smiths…

Solar Powered Game Of Life Follows The Sun’s Rhythm

Conway’s Game of Life is a beautiful example of how complex behavior can emerge from a few very simple rules. But while it uses biological terminology such as “cells”, “aliv…

Hackaday Prize 2023: Supercapacitors Let Solar Speaker Work In Darkness

Solar panels are a great way to generate clean electricity, but require some energy storage mechanism if you also want to use their power at night. This can be a bit tricky for large solar farms th…

If You Can’t See A Solar Panel, That Doesn’t Mean It’s Not There

In the shift away from fossil fuel energy sources, there has been a huge expansion in solar power. We’ve seen solar thermal plants in the desert and photovoltaic panel farms covering huge are…

Solar Cells As Art Form

When most of us approach a project, we have a certain problem to solve. 3D printing, microcontrollers, batteries, and all kinds of technologies are usually tools to accomplish some task. This is no…

Maximum Power Point Tracking: Optimizing Solar Panels

When looking at integrating a photovoltaic solar panel into a project, the naive assumption would be that you simply point the panel into the general direction of where the Sun is, and out comes go…

Solar Cells, Half Off

A company named Leap Photovoltaic claims they have a technology to create solar panels without silicon wafers which would cut production costs in half. According to [FastCompany] the cells are stil…

Solar Power Goes Back To 1910 Tech

If you want to read about a low-tech approach to solar cells invented — and forgotten — 40 years before Bell Labs announced the first practical silicon solar cell, we can’t promis…

Making Ferroelectric Solar Cells Better

Researchers claim that using several very thin layers of ferroelectric crystals can lead to significantly better ferroelectric solar cell efficiency. But don’t pull the panels off your roof y…

Wireless Earbuds Charge Themselves

As more and more ports are removed from our smart devices, it seems that we have one of two options available for using peripherals: either buy a dongle to continue to use wired devices, or switch …

Revolving Plant Tower Is Solar-Powered

Do you live in a small or yard-less space, but want to grow things anyway? You’re not totally out of luck — you’ll just have to get creative and probably vertical with your planti…