solar charging

[SuperFlo75]

What happens with the Solar energy when the watch is full charged? Can we overcharge it?

[surfboomerang]

@SuperFlo75 I expect this is handled by the battery management. Like when it’s on a charger.

[Anton Vanderpoel]

@zhang965 the display is turning black after one minut not using the watch i put the watch in the sun not wearing

[deserthike20]

@SuperFlo75 Over in the Suunto Telegram group its been mentioned that the watch will only solar charge when its below 94% to prevent battery overcharging.

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@deserthike20 that is not correct I think in the lastest firmware. Not it will charge. You can test this via the widget.

Solar should stop at 99%

[surfboomerang]

Is the some kind of scale on the solar history bars?

I noticed today that 2 10min bars were almost full. Once a third appeared, with a slightly higher value than the previous ones, the previous two changed to half full.

[DMytro]

I have a question too. Afaik each charging cycle takes a toll on the battery health, even more so if the charging cycle is incomplete. Has it been investigated, how solar charging impacts battery health long term. Or has there been any hw changes implemented to meditate that, e.g. use solar power not to change but to directly power the watch s.t. the battery isn’t used and so it’s durability isn’t impacted.

[freeheeler]

@DMytro
I will let you know in 4-5 years
no, kidding!
I guess Suunto did their homework. compared to charging phones we have way less cycles, hence I don’t worry too much

[DMytro]

@freeheeler with non-solar watches, sure. But if charging cycle is triggered every time the watch ‘sees’ the sun, you probably have multiple charging cycles a day. And I wonder how healthy it is in the long run. In other words, would the watch loose 20% of its original capacity already after a year instead of 2-3 year with non-solar watches.

[freeheeler]

@DMytro
I understood that a charging cycle corresponds to 1 full charge, not every single time you point the watch to the sun… but of course I don’t know details. I just assume that all cycles could be reached within a day or two

[DMytro]

@freeheeler well, I’m no expert either - maybe someone in the forum knows more and can comment. But to me it seems that the following holds: 1 small charge via solar, e.g. increase by 5% (btw charging in the sun prob means that the watch is at least warm and charging warm battery is also not ideal afaik) is not as bad for the battery health as charge from 0 to full, but 20 such charges by 5% is worse than one charge from 0 to 100%, although I don’t know by how much.

I hope this isn’t perceived as criticism, I’m just curious.

[freeheeler]

@DMytro
@Egika once explained it well to me in a pm… I stopped worrying that moment

[deserthike20]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos That’s good to hear. Charging to 99% is probably what most people would expect as normal behavior.

[Highlands]

@DMytro I couldn’t be less bothered about the battery of my watches. They have pretty long lifespan and by the time their deterioration starts worrying me, I guess I’ll have changed the watches. 4-5 years will be without any problems.

[mikeorbreak]

@freeheeler said in solar charging:

@DMytro
@Egika once explained it well to me in a pm… I stopped worrying that moment

Do you want to tell us? With permission of @Egika of course…

[freeheeler]

@mikeorbreak
as said before, long story short (what I recall): don’t worry, it takes long for watches to reach charging cycles

[surfboomerang]

The solar widget confuses me a little bit.
I had an office day on Friday with probably 1 hour of sun that day. On Saturday I had a 3 hour windsurf session with probably 5 hours of sun, but the graph doesn’t seem to show that.

[wotus]

@surfboomerang Could it be that the graph shows the relative energy balance, on Saturday the collected and consumed energy during windsurfing were almost equal, but on Friday more energy was collected than consumed?

[vlado]

I left it this morning on clear sun for some 3 hours, battery was at 14% at the begining and after those 3 hours it was still on 14%, it did not raise…but that was 8 hours ago and it is still on 14. My question is…when it is being solar charged does the percentage raise or it just stays on that initial percentage for a lot longer than when it did not had solar charge?

[SuperFlo75]

The last two days I could test the solar charging… after a long period of raining we had a slighty cloudy sky with periods of sun 🤩 I noticed the the force of the solar charging is very very depending of the direction or the angle of the incoming sun… but I don‘t want to change the watch from the left to the right wrist when I change the direction of my activity…