Solar Powered QRSS Transmitter

Haray! I’m making awesome progress with my QRSS transmitter design. Because my current transmitter (previous few posts) was randomly freezing-up (likely due to the oscillator stopping its oscillating due to being overloaded) so I moved the oscillator from in-chip to an external oscillator. It’s been made small enough to fit in an Altoids tin, and I already tested it with the solar panel and it works! Awesome! Here are some photos. Again, when I perfect the design I’ll post final schematics.

Sticking out are wires for power and an antenna on each side. The goal is to hang the device between two trees by its own antenna. That’s my new chip development board. I made it with what I needed on it. It’s so convenient! It uses 5v of power from the USB port too! Altogether I’ve tested the device and confirmed it transmits radio when the solar panel is illuminated. I’m thinking of making it more effective by adding more panels… but that’s it for now!