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Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

witch.solar

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Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#51

Post by lowercasename »

Aachen wrote: post #38
lowercasename wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, granted, no doubt, but my poor little server routinely crashes after a few dozen connections, and exposing it to HN was the first time it experienced that many. Something is clearly amiss!

Sure, I didn't mean to dismiss that it's a good test for custom software on embedded hardware :). More of a general remark that it seems most people's perception is that HN does some good "hugging" and that I think this is a misconception - unless, of course, you run ultra low power. Kudos for doing exactly that!

You're right - this was my impression too! You read a few dramatic posts about being hugged and you get this idea that HN is a behemoth that DDoSes everything it loves. Thanks for the context!

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#52

Post by snek_case »

jcun4128 wrote: post #43
snek_case wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want more power, there's a lot of all-in-one lithium ion batteries with inverter nowadays. These also have a built-in solar charge controller. You can pair it with a 20W, 30W or 100W solar panel, and this can all be found on amazon. Theres also USB outputs and 12V outputs typically, if you want to be more energy-efficient. Example: https://www.rocksolars.com/products/rocksolar-weekender-port... Should be enoug…

Yeah you can go hardcore. I remember seeing someone make a toolbox server that they put on a roof, it might have been posted here actually. I was just looking at small things like those garden night lights you can stake into the ground, has a solar cell on it.

If you can make a garden light server that will survive the HN front page, you win at HN :)

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#53

Post by codazoda »

jcun4128 wrote: post #43
snek_case wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want more power, there's a lot of all-in-one lithium ion batteries with inverter nowadays. These also have a built-in solar charge controller. You can pair it with a 20W, 30W or 100W solar panel, and this can all be found on amazon. Theres also USB outputs and 12V outputs typically, if you want to be more energy-efficient. Example: https://www.rocksolars.com/products/rocksolar-weekender-port... Should be enoug…

Yeah you can go hardcore. I remember seeing someone make a toolbox server that they put on a roof, it might have been posted here actually. I was just looking at small things like those garden night lights you can stake into the ground, has a solar cell on it.

I also have an outdoor solar light that I’m not using and a raspberry pi zero. I dunno how solar controllers work or what a small one might require. I also wonder if I could run this off of 4 or 8 AA rechargeable batteries and then just feed the solar panel into those. If it worked, they may not work long due to charge/discharge without a proper controller, but maybe that’s okay with replaceable batteries. I have no idea if it could start this simple.

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#54

Post by codazoda »

samstave wrote: post #17

this would be really cool along national hiking trails to hold data abut a spot, or have a guest login, or a trail-head/trail-check-point type logging system, say along the appalachian trail where hikers register/leave notes etc at each check point. these should be placed all over and come up with a good app to manage such. these was that cheap card here a while back which had cell coverage for like 5 years and could…

I have a raspberry pi zero that I’d kinda like to setup as a Wi-Fi hotspot like this. You could only use it if you were in range. Kind of a Wi-Fi geo cache.

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#55

Post by ricardobayes »

debesyla wrote: post #46
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #44

Solar energy is too unpredictable and can't serve as a reliable source of power. We should be thinking about servers running on nuclear power.

You got me thinking... Are there any ways for a simple person to make it's own nuclear power reactor? You know, wind and solar is just "buy from internets and plug in", mostly, but what about nuclear? Would it even be legal? :-D

Probably not. This toy was the closest thing I think a layperson can get their hands on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_La...

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#56

Post by jart »

lowercasename wrote: post #34
Aachen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN may be a good stress test for Arduinos and WordPress, but it's really not that much load. I've recently had my site high on the front page and the page specifically recommended reloading if you didn't see the effect the first time. This is hosted on a ten year old laptop and a home Internet connection. The load average didn't budge. People hugely overestimate the amount of firepower you need when you "go viral", p…

Well, granted, no doubt, but my poor little server routinely crashes after a few dozen connections, and exposing it to HN was the first time it experienced that many. Something is clearly amiss!

Are you doing SSL on that Solar Arduino? Try using only the ciphersuite RSA-AES128-CBC-SHA256 with a 1024 bit RSA key.

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#57

Post by bubba_sparks »

lessname wrote: post #41
bubba_sparks wrote: post #31

I can see how this is all going to play out. When the robots finally turn on us they'll have a few hours of daylight to hunt and kill us before their power runs out. Perhaps a bit longer if you live in the desert. We will have to scurry about at night scrounging for food like roaches and rats until 7am when their solar batteries have enough juice to power them back online. Progress marches forward one baby step at a…

Then humans try to darken the sky, which results in robots using humans as a source of power. Sounds familiar.

Another one of my ideas stolen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#58

Post by saeranv »

Very cool project. I'm really intrigued by this idea of having websites reflecting geographic location, and even local weather conditions (with some lag). What's the peak and average power (energy/second) you get from your solar panel, and what's the power consumption of your server? Also what's the physical size of your solar panels?

My guess is that the server might use around the same power as a laptop (~50 W). Assuming a square meter patch of earth gets around 100 W (dependent on latitude/time of day), and assuming something like a 10% efficiency that works out to around 80 W (on average during sunlight hours)? So you're maybe getting 8 hours of server power per day from 10 hours of sunlight? Is that a reasonable ballpark estimate?

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#59

Post by jcun4128 »

codazoda wrote: post #53
jcun4128 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you can go hardcore. I remember seeing someone make a toolbox server that they put on a roof, it might have been posted here actually. I was just looking at small things like those garden night lights you can stake into the ground, has a solar cell on it.

I also have an outdoor solar light that I’m not using and a raspberry pi zero. I dunno how solar controllers work or what a small one might require. I also wonder if I could run this off of 4 or 8 AA rechargeable batteries and then just feed the solar panel into those. If it worked, they may not work long due to charge/discharge without a proper controller, but maybe that’s okay with replaceable batteries. I have no…

Just rattling thoughts off the top of my head, my advice would be to go to a forum like allaboutcircuits.com and look around/ask. Actually could probably get help on a forum like RaspberryPi/askelectronics on reddit.

Probably not going to work honestly about the outdoor light (need more solar cells). The voltage charging the battery has to be higher than the voltage of the battery. Also have to look at the current being drawn by each piece, when the radio goes on that causes a surge in current draw too. For the Pi Zero (non-W) something like 5V * 70-200mA say current so up to 1W needed * duration. The batteries could do that but the solar cell can't keep it topped off. Also yeah you need the charge controller, some diode to make sure voltage doesn't go back to the solar cells from the batteries... lead acid battery is "safer" to work with but BMS chips for lipos are pretty inexpensive. Need a voltage regulator to take your batteries and drop it down/keep it at 5V to keep the Pi happy.

There's probably way easier approaches to do this with regard to pre-made parts but yeah. I guess depends how much you want to learn/do yourself. I remember the first time I soldered a 2x16 LCD display there were micro shorts and it was smoking.

What I like about the capacitor idea and something low power like an ESP01 is it just accepts what the solar cells put in and that's it of course I still use a voltage regulator to put 3.3V to the ESP. Doesn't last as long as a battery but it's not as complex.

Anyway this guy made a solar-powered rc plane/charging it in midair pretty cool.

https://youtu.be/1OGrDvInUAY?t=701

Re: Show HN: A tiny solar-powered server only awake during the day

#60

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

lowercasename wrote: post #34
Aachen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN may be a good stress test for Arduinos and WordPress, but it's really not that much load. I've recently had my site high on the front page and the page specifically recommended reloading if you didn't see the effect the first time. This is hosted on a ten year old laptop and a home Internet connection. The load average didn't budge. People hugely overestimate the amount of firepower you need when you "go viral", p…

Well, granted, no doubt, but my poor little server routinely crashes after a few dozen connections, and exposing it to HN was the first time it experienced that many. Something is clearly amiss!

Sure, but - and I say this with considerable respect because it in no way detracts from the impressiveness of the work - that's clearly a bug, and I would hope most production web servers don't fall over quite that easily.
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