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Hi
I though i'd share my successful experience into using the sun power for charging my 1000H. I am a total novice in electricity so don't be too demanding!
Material used :
1-Eeepc 1000H running Mandriva 2008.1 (of course!)
2-Solar panel 13 watts from : £ 50
http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu … S936A.html
3- Solar controller : £15
http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu … /REG7.html
4- Deep cycle battery powerfit 18Amps/h
Powerfit S312/18 18AH 12v VRLA AGM Battery about £ 40
5-Brando car charger for eeePC 900/1000 £10
From ebay...
6- The sun!
Well I live in the UK and this year the summer is extremely wet! Still, a few hours of sun are able to maintain the battery.
The set-up :
Solar panel----------------------charge controler------------Battery
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Brando adapter
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EEEPC
So far I used this system since the begining of July. First I used it with a 701 and the charge was really easy, then with the 1000H which is a bit more power hungry.
I have used the system also with the original charger and an inverter, but it seems that the inverter is draining his own energy amking the system less efficient.
I don't use the charge controller when the sun condition is poor as it drops a few mAmps. I had also a short circuit once for only a few seconds which burnt a couple of wires. Following the incident the battery was "poorly" for a couple of days but has now totally recovered.
At the momment I have to set-up the panel daily in my garden but I hope to soon install a 20watts on my garage's roof in order to plug a bigger battery and use it for other purposes (maybe my NAS).
I also charged our toothbrushes, my phones andd use the battery sometime for our light while watching TV (12 watts energy saver using the inverter).
The solution makes not much economical sense but it is real fun and makes you feel independent! It is also embraces the Philosophy of a netbook and of open source....
After numerous searches, http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/ is the best website for this sort of material : Cheap enough and easy to set-up.
Stef
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What a cool idea 
You should write a blog or something about the project.
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Awesome stuff. I'd like to put something on http://www.solar-umpc.com about this. Do you have pictures?
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I like this. Pictures please 
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Awesome!
pics please
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I'm pleased to see someone else tinkering with solar powering their Eee, I have a 30 watt panel (25 years old & outputs a measured 24 watts in full sunlight) + charge controller + 70Ah battery which I had some fun tinkering with during the summer, but I soon found 24 watts is quite small for my plan - retire this 701 and get a bigger screen Eee as my main portable laptop, the 701 will then be powered 24/7 with a 2.5" USB drive from solar as a downloading machine and active storage for when I'm out and about with the other Eee.
I'm in the process of building a solar panel 1 metre square which should yeild 120-130 watts, soldering all the individual cells and building the frame from scratch (the cells are identical to the ones shown in this very interesting solar panel build except I've had to solder on the tabbing on 72 cells myself)
Parts for this panel have cost me around £300 but that's cheap considering you'd be extremely lucky to buy a 120watt panel for less than £500.
The panel will then charge the 70Ah battery, to get the power from the battery to where I am 30 metres away I can't just put 12v down some wire because the power loss is terrible for such a low voltage, so I'll be using a cheap small UPS as the mains inverter, replacing the 5Ah battery with the 70Ah one and putting the resulting 230V AC along 30 meters of mains cable (extremely minimal power loss using high voltage AC).
But here's where things get a bit more complicated (and neat), a relay will be connected to the output of the charge controller which controls grid mains going into the UPS, meaning when the battery is charged the grid mains is switched off so the UPS uses the battery but if/when that becomes depleated it'll switch on the grid mains input.
Theoretically I should end up with a completely uninterruptable power supply for my Eee 701 which uses solar power and falls back to grid mains if the sun doesn't shine enough and/or I start powering other things besides the Eee.
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Here is my setup for the solar powered Eeepc, don't be too hard on my website design skills, I started 3 weeks ago...
Ther you can see the material I used as described a bit further up in the thread....
My site
(Site open only between 7:30 -> 22:30 uk time)
Stef
Last edited by sjaglin (2008-11-10 2:32:11 am)
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hi, This is a very interesting project, and I'd like to consider a variation to use an eeepc battery in place of the Deep cycle.
This means modifying the original setup alonng the "Battery" branch
Solar panel----------------------charge controler------------Battery
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Brando adapter
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EEEPC
I believe i will need
4: an Xpansys Battery Charger for ASUS Eee PC 700/701 Series:
http://www.expansys-usa.com/d.aspx?i=169449
5: a spare eeepc battery
But there are two problems: The first is the cables dont plug into each other and the second is that the charge controller outputs 12V up to 7A and the Xpansys charger requires a supply voltage: 9~10 V and an input current: <3.0Aays,
so it wont work... Does anybody know where one can find a charge controler that outputs 9.5V at <2.5A ??
The plug problem could be solved by splicing wires...
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I recently had a charge controller made by the guys at www.firststopsolar.co.uk it was for a different project and only 6v but they may be able to help.
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