The death of the QX5252?
For years I have been working on the candle project - the idea of an environmentally friendly perpetual "candle", solar powered, that does justice to the gentle flickering of a real candle, including sputtering, has driven a lot of content on this channel!
The only unease I have felt is in using NiMH batteries for solar power storage. Heavy and having a fairly low power cycle count, the main issue was environmental - some nasty chemicals and a not particularly long life meant too many would end up in landfill.
Then in the super capacitor realm we had 120F and 250F LIC capacitors that charged to 3.8V, has a cycle count between 100000 and 1000000 charge/discharge cycles, was light weight and seemed to contain a number of problematic barriers:
1. Making the code so efficient that a super capacitor could drive the project
2. Make the PFS154 better at monitoring the day/night interface to optimise power usage
3. Boost/control the output of the solar panel to charge a 3.8V super capacitor safely
This third hurdle bothered me A LOT because the QX5252 was 80% efficient on a good day and I was using a 3.9V zener clamp on the output which further wasted power.
I needed a good DC-DC boost converter that could step into it's shoes (after all there must be tens of videos on this channel that feature this little soldier).
And so the search began - with some parameters to help me weed out contenders. AI was not much help (a bit too "chicken Little" for my taste)
I am really happy with the TPS6102X family (featured before on this channel), but it is too expensive at the moment, and so with cost in mind I compromised to the BL8530/1N5817 combo.
Please take a look at the video and let me know what you think - especially if you have another contender!
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