MultiNav Pro+ Power Kit - can it charge and power the module at the same time?

@Keith Bryant hey, this is actually one of the nicer properties of supercapacitor-based systems compared to lithium — supercaps handle simultaneous charge and discharge pretty naturally since there's no chemistry to destabilize. The Power/Program Kit is designed around that kind of always-on use case, so in principle your solar-in/load-out setup should work without needing an external charge management circuit sitting in between.

 

That said, the one thing I'd watch with a small solar panel specifically is input voltage regulation. Supercaps will happily accept whatever you throw at them up to their rated voltage, so if your panel has any open-circuit voltage spikes (which small unregulated panels definitely can), you want to make sure the input side is clean. If your panel has a built-in MPPT controller or you're running it through even a basic voltage regulator, you're probably fine. If it's a raw panel direct to the kit, I'd put a simple buck converter or clamp circuit upstream just to be safe.

 

Worth flagging this directly to Moamen in the Dev Hub too — he'd know the exact input voltage tolerance on the kit and whether there's any onboard protection circuit handling that already.

Yeah the super-cap setup on the Power/Program Kit handles simultaneous charge and load just fine in my experience - it's basically designed for exactly that use case, the cap acts as a buffer so the input and output are pretty well decoupled. That said, if your panel has a lot of voltage variance (cloudy days, partial shading etc.) I'd still throw a small MPPT or at least a basic LDO upstream just to keep the input clean and avoid any weird transients hitting the kit.

Peter's spot on about the MPPT - honestly even a cheap one makes a huge difference in keeping things stable when the panel output gets sketchy. I've been running a similar solar setup with the Power Kit for a few months and the simultaneous charge/draw hasn't caused me any issues, but I did have one weird brownout early on that traced back to a transient from the panel, so cleaner input really is worth it.

Echoing what Peter and Christina said - the simultaneous charge/load thing is genuinely fine, the supercap does its job there. One thing worth knowing from my own deployments though: if your solar panel has a notably high open-circuit voltage, double-check that it stays within the kit's input range under no-load conditions (like if a cloud clears suddenly and the panel briefly floats high with nothing drawing), bc that's caught a few people off guard before the MPPT was in the loop.

Really solid advice from everyone here - the simultaneous charge/load is definitely supported by design, but Dawn's point about open-circuit voltage is the one I'd flag most for a solar deployment specifically. We've seen a handful of field cases where people skip the Voc check and run into trouble exactly when conditions are "best" (full sun after overcast), which is kind of a cruel irony. Def worth doing the math on your panel's Voc before committing to a final config.