I've been running my simulated space program (called the Garden Space Program run by the Null Island Space Agency) for some years now. The biggest challenge always has been to provide enough power.

So, in 2019, i decided to set up a proper solar station in my garden to provide power to all further "space probes", to teach myself all there is about using the awesome fusion power provided by our central star. Project SOLSTICE also serves as a development and learning platform for all things related low power electronics and power distribution.

In this talk, i will share all that i have learned (so far) about the topic as well as a few of my best facepalm moments (too many to recount them all). I'll also give you a good overview of my setup, so you can reproduce and adapt it for your own projects.

[Warning: Some soldering is required. If you are terminally afraid of using hot devices, liquid metal, exploding/smoking electronics or badly written Arduino libraries downloaded from Github, this may not be the talk for you.]

Teaser on Youtube