Solar / Battery - Charge Status

I’m a bit new to all this - However I built the balenasense project (BME680 / Monitoring etc) - I am running this with a small Solar panel and battery.

Is it possible to check Battery Status (% Charged / Charging Status etc) My reason for asking is if the panel doesn’t provide enough charge during the day then at least I am aware if I want to add in a DC charger to boost the charging.

Currently I cannot see a way of doing it?

Thanks in advance (And sorry if its a stupid question!)

Hello @JohnWestgoat,

Does you panel provides some sort or data communication from external devices?
Otherwise, you will be able to assemble a simple circuit to measure the battery voltage and use a ADC (analog to digital converter) to read the data on the raspberry pi.

Here is a sample project: https://raspi.tv/2013/controlled-shutdown-duration-test-of-pi-model-a-with-2-cell-lipo

Then study the python code from https://github.com/balena-io-projects/balena-sense/tree/master/sensor/scripts and check how everything is connected and add your application to the logger.

Good luck, it will be a fun project!