solar charging

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…

sartoric

@SuperFlo75 said in solar charging:

the force of the solar charging is very very depending of the direction or the angle of the incoming sun

Well, that’s actually how solar panel works, unfortunately

deserthike20

@surfboomerang I’m seeing similar behavior on the weekly solar chart as well. It doesn’t seem to be displaying the info correctly.

surfboomerang

@wotus would definitely be a nice idea, but then I would suspect negative values since I ended up with a lower battery percentage at the end of the day.

surfboomerang

@vlado it does raise, but you need a lot of sun and patience.

craigeggleton

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos left mine in direct sunlight for 30 minutes (off wrist), screen went black, and zero charging.

surfboomerang

@craigeggleton it took me around 50 minutes for 1%. So normally 4-5 full solar bars

MiniForklift

@craigeggleton said in solar charging:

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos left mine in direct sunlight for 30 minutes (off wrist), screen went black, and zero charging.

The screen will go blank if the watch isn’t being moved, but it will still be charging. IIRC the solar functioning is actually better once the watchface has gone off

Tieutieu

@surfboomerang today tried during a car travel.
With this amount, I didn’t won any single % of battery. Still have to experiment…maybe amount of sun behind glasses was not as strong as direct sun.

surfboomerang

@Tieutieu No, the amount of sunlight in the car is way less than outside. When I wrote 4-5 bars, I meant totally full bars. I was outside and the watch was facing the sun.

Also, if I understood correctly, the bars are only showing 50000 lux and the watch is capable of collecting more than that. So it could be that in my test the watch was receiving way more light than a full bar.

Tieutieu

@surfboomerang thanks for explanations ! It Confirms I need more time (more sun !!) to have decent results. I have a long race to come next weekend, it will be a good test !
My only concern is that I my skin turns usually very quickly to full red when there is a bright sun !!

freeheeler

@Tieutieu
…the solar charging bar can be dual use… when one bar is full it’s time to think about putting on sunscreen

aroo7

Is it known what exactly the stripes on the viewer represent? Suunto only reports light output in lux (or I didn’t read something) but that’s not information on how much of that energy we gained.
A cool addition, by the way would be a statistic info in the solar widget showing how much energy we gained from the solar panel during the day and the whole week

Likarnik

@aroo7 And graph in SA like steps/calories

isazi

@freeheeler I know that if the battery of my Vertical solar starts going up I need to apply suncreen more than once. Happened to me twice.

valdis830

@vlado
I guess the big drawback is the useful surface of the solar panel. Each m2 of a conventional solar panels have a power around 250w which, extrapolating to our Vertical, would be about 0.25w at full sun.
As a general rule, USB chargers usually have an output voltage of 5V. So, for example, a charger that is capable of supplying 1.5 A (amps) at 5V (volts) will have a power about of 7.5 W (watts).
Solar charger does not more than a little help to extend the life of the battery;)

Egika

@valdis830 as the watch has a super high battery efficiency, luckly not so much energy is needed.
The solar option in Suunto Vertical will increase the battery time during activity significantly (in the range of +30%)!
This is leading the competition of comparable watches and really makes a difference.

Even if on a 2A power supply, the charging circuit of the watch will reduce the charging current to what is healthy for the battery. It will not reach 7.5W

aroo7

Is it known what the bars on the widget graph mean? And how to interpret them when they are “full” of light?

SuperFlo75

Today, I went on holidays by car… the sun was shining on my left wrist about 4 or 5 hours… solar charging increased the battery from 78% to 80%… i could see a little effectiveness of solar charging!

SuperFlo75

I noticed all these days that the scale of the solar display is changing… when I go into the sun in the morning, the stripe of of display increases, and if the sun is strong, the stripe is ‚full‘… but after some more 10min periods, the scale changes and the stripes don‘t reach the max anymore… in the evening, when the sun goes down, it goes backwards and the scale is like in the morning. Regarding to this, it is not possible to reach a ‚full‘ max solar stripe at noon… who can explain? How can I increase solar charging when sittung in the full sun at noon?

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