Solar Cell Phone Charger

Description

This Arduino project is a solar cell phone charger that charges your phone when you insert money. The charger uses a solar panel to power an Arduino board, a bill validator, and a 20x4 character LCD screen. The LCD screen displays the amount of money inserted, the charging time, and the status of the charger.
Project at Tha Luang Cement Thai Anusorn Technical College (2017)

Prerequisites

You will need the following hardware to run this project:

An Arduino board (tested on an Arduino UNO)
A bill validator module (tested on a JY-926)
A 20x4 character LCD screen with an I2C interface
A solar panel (tested on a 5W panel)
A 12V battery (tested on a 7Ah lead-acid battery)
A 12V voltage regulator (tested on an LM7805)

You will also need the following software:

Arduino IDE (tested on version 1.8.15)
LiquidCrystal_I2C library (tested on version 1.1.2)

Installing

1. Connect the bill validator module to the Arduino board's A0 pin.
2. Connect the LCD screen to the Arduino board's I2C pins (A4 for SDA and A5 for SCL).
3. Connect the solar panel and the 12V battery to the voltage regulator's input pins.
4. Connect the voltage regulator's output pin to the Arduino board's VIN pin.
5. Open the 'Solar_Cell_Phone_Charger.ino sketch in the Arduino IDE.
6. Install the LiquidCrystal_I2C library if you haven't already (Sketch > Include Library > Manage Libraries).
7. Upload the sketch to the Arduino board.

Usage

1. Insert money into the bill validator module. The LCD screen will display the amount of money inserted and the charging time.
2. Press the button connected to pin A2 to start the charging process. The LCD screen will display the charging time countdown.
3. Once the charging time is up, the charger will stop charging and wait for more money to be inserted.

License