Thinking Of Building A Solar Energy Analyzer For Embedded Applications- Thoughts?

Hey guys,

Please, I’m not marketing anything, I’m just trying to see if this is a good value proposition.

So, I see the founders of the [PV Pi](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pvpi/pv-pi-power-your-raspberry-pi-with-the-sun) success for kickstarter for a raspberry pi shield to help with powering a raspberry pi with solar power. I’m quite inspired.

Since they’re focusing more on more efficient power delivery, I’m thinking of helping with monitoring. I’ve personally done a solar project (this was indoor tho) and all the wires and breakouts you need can be annoying. You need current, voltage sensor, I needed SD card reader to store data, needed fuel gauge, lux sensor etc.

I’m thinking of having this on one board. So, you can put the device inline of your solar, battery and load or just solar and load. It would have onboard sensors with one I2C output pins from a bus so you can choose what sensors to read from. There’ll also be a SD card slot if you want data stored on there. There’s no onboard MCU so one would use their external MCU and can write any software to interface with everything.

I know there’s some inline battery meters like [this](https://www.jumia.com.ng/null-dc-battery-monitor-metervoltmeterwattmeter-200a-202788093.html) or [this](https://www.joulescope.com) DC energy analyzer. I’m not sure if the value is that much or if people don’t care about buying many multiple breakout boards. I can imagine it’ll be for hobbyists, product developers when they want to prototype etc. I’m thinking and hoping it’ll be $50 - $75.

So, do y’all think this is what pursuing as a product idea? Would you buy it? I might make it regardless, just to learn and improve, but I’m still curious. Hopefully, experience from this can be then utilized to make a more rugged version with custom firmware, maybe a screen etc.

Thank you all.