alan smith wrote:

>dumb question...but what exactly is the PIC going to be doing?  Seems to me, if you choose a nanowatt part, you could just run it right off the battery bank
>  
>
Of course it could run right off the battery bank!  And it may well be 
that I will wind up doing that.  But I like to have the option of 
powering it from the solar panel, and wondered about what problems might 
arise if I did so.  From my viewpoint, doing it that way offers some 
benefits, such as automatically turning the pic on in the morning and 
automatically turning it off at night.  It also makes the wiring 
easier.  So far as the first question, the pic will be used to implement 
a multi-stage battery charging algorithm.  Keep in mind, now, that this 
is a hobbyist project, and as such it does not have to necessarily be 
economically "reasonable." :-)

John

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