Thanks to the amazing efforts of Teklektik over the past several months, we managed to make this customized solar Cycle Analyst firmware databox in a way that could be useable by anyone else doing a solar EV project. Instead of needing two separate amp-hour meters on a solar EV, one on the solar panels and another on the battery/motor controller, you can use your main CA display with a separate current sensor on the auxilliary input. Then you can view and record both the solar charge current and the controller currents from one device.
For people wanting to try this out, we have an alpha release of a general solar CA3 code that you can download here:
(unzip the package into a V1.54 setup utility installation folder, choosing to overwrite or skip duplicate files)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7a2jdtzvtc26xp6/CA3-11a23S.zip?dl=0
This will require having a solar current sensor on the auxilliary input plug of the CA3, and for that we recommend an isolated sensor to prevent any issues with ground reference. Just about any popular hall effect current sensor that will run off 5V power and produce a 0-5V signal can be configured to work, like popular ACS712 device.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8882
Or the potted plug and play sensor that we have here
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/solar/solar-current-sense.html
This will mean that you no longer have an analog aux input for on the fly limit adjustments, but you do still have the ability to run a set of digitial aux up/down buttons with this solar code, and for most people having a single adjustment setting is sufficient. In this case, you just need the up button to short the aux signal to Gnd, and the down button to short it to Gnd via a schottky diode to produce ~0.4V.
I've provided versions of this firmware to a several other people doing solar ebike builds outside of the Suntrip too. That includes Mark Havran who was exhibiting a solar ebike at the SF Maker Faire a few weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR80QjH6rxg#t=4h28m47s
One of the handy things about this firmware that you wouldn't get easily with two separate meters is that you can now see your
NET watt-hours / mi over the course of a trip, including discharge, regen, and solar energy in and out of the pack. This data toggles with the standard discharge wh/km value. With a solar ebike setup, the goal in general is to come out at the end of the day with a net 0 wh/mi. This picture here is from the CA3 on Mark's solar ebike after his trip to the Fair and associated charging.
It's really cool to be able to see that, and I'm expecting to make heavy use of this statistic during the course of the Suntrip, monitoring the net solar wh/km during the course of the day and budgeting our power and distance goals based coming out around zero.
It also does a net amp-hour accumulator, in addition to the discharge and regen amp-hours, which can be useful for those wanting a more detailed energy breakdown.
For people who have a GPS Analogger device, it's also possible to update the CA3 with a firmware that will not only have the solar current sensor, but that will also be able to read and display the GPS data (including time, heading, elevation etc) on the CA screen. This requires doing some hardware modification (soldering jumpers etc.) to the analogger so that the GPS's data ouput signal is sent to the data input line on the CA3's communication plug. If people are interested in this then let me know and I can start a separate thread on the topic explaining how it's done.