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Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

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Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#51

Post by oh_sigh »

samstave wrote: post #48
oh_sigh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably want to look into M2M(machine to machine) plans if you don't plan on using standard telephone features with your device and just want data. A lot of companies offer this service these days. For example(random googling first result): https://hologram.io/pricing/ is offering M2M sims for $1 per SIM per month + 40 cents per mb.

Yeah Hologram is cool but super expensive... https://communityphone.org/ These guys can beat their prices. and are YC alum.

It looks like they don't offer M2M plans, and their cheapest plan appears to be ~$20/month(I guess? I don't see a recurring billing option). Maybe it's the cheapest if you are sending 500+MB of data per month but it seems hologram(or some other M2M sim provider) would be cheaper.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#52

Post by tehlike »

teraflop wrote: post #28
el_benhameen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an answer to your question, but can you tell me more about how you source your sims/data plans?

I investigated this a year or so ago for a hobby project. The best cheap option I found for non-trivial amounts of data in the US was T-Mobile's $10/month plan, which comes with 2GB/mo of high-speed data, and throttles down to roughly 64kbit/sec after that.

Project fi might be interesting too.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#54

Post by teraflop »

tehlike wrote: post #52
teraflop wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I investigated this a year or so ago for a hobby project. The best cheap option I found for non-trivial amounts of data in the US was T-Mobile's $10/month plan, which comes with 2GB/mo of high-speed data, and throttles down to roughly 64kbit/sec after that.

Project fi might be interesting too.

Yeah, that would be an option. But IMO the biggest downside would be that they charge for overages instead of throttling.

If I'm working on a hobby project that involves uploading data, and something gets into an unexpected state, it's easy to imagine it transferring tens of GB in a matter of hours. In that event, I'd rather have it restricted to dialup speed (which is still enough to transfer 20GB/month) than get hit with hundreds of dollars in bandwidth charges overnight.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#56

Post by konstruktors »

nevi-me wrote: post #9

Reading this has reminded me of something I wanted to explore in the past. Most of my applications/requirements for a Pi include GSM, but I've found GSM modules to be very expensive, often being more expensive than the Pi itself. The author mentions a mobile USB modem, and it's just dawned on me that older 3G/HSDPA dongles are often very cheap. Does anyone have experience using them, especially what power implication…

Author of the blog post here. I've used [this SIM800 Raspberry Pi hat](https://www.itead.cc/wiki/RPI_SIM800_GSM/GPRS_ADD-ON_V2.0) and it requires some additional GPIO toggling to enable the modem after a power loss. [Here are the scripts](https://github.com/kasparsd/remote-pine) for doing that and creating the PPP network interface.

The USB modems are nice because you get full control over the modem with the AT commands. I've used the Huawei E173 modem which can be easily unlocked and works great out of the box.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#57

Post by konstruktors »

nanomonkey wrote: post #2

100W solar panel seems like overkill. I'm curious what the minimal size panel one would need for 24 hour usage. Assuming 5 hours of usable sun, it would seem like a 20 W panel would be sufficient.

100Wp is probably a bit of an overkill but it does help during the winter season when there are multiple days with almost no sun. Also, there is plenty of shading from the nearby trees so I wanted to be on the safe side.

It would be nice to log the power consumption and the battery voltage but I didn't do it for this project.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#58

Post by konstruktors »

mtw wrote: post #18

I see a house, why not use the Pi's Wifi instead of a modem?

It does use the built-in WiFi to connect to a WiFi network created by the mobile modem I placed at the neighbours house which has a permanent power supply.

I considered using a mobile USB modem attached directly to the Pi but that requires extra effort keeping it connected with something like a cron task that pings 8.8.8.8 and restarts the connection if there is no response.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#59

Post by konstruktors »

pi-rat wrote: post #50
algaeontoast wrote: post #43

Lithium ion is so cheap these days I'm stunned this project resorted to using inefficient and out-dated lead acid batteries.

Even if you can manage to find li-ion cheaper, you would need to build a pack of 6+ 18650 cells for comparative capacity. A single Pb is much simpler. Bam, $18, done, a single unit, 80Wh ready to go, super simple to charge too. It's not like the size or weight matters to him, and it seems his panel is big enough to avoid deep cycling it too often.

Exactly. And I haven't found cheap charge controllers that support the voltage range of Li-ion packs (like 12.6V for a 3S pack or 16.8V for a 4S pack).

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#60

Post by abdullahkhalids »

ldoughty wrote: post #46

I would absolutely love a kit to do solar + battery for a pi.. this has been one of my dream projects but I know too little about electricity to figure out all the components I need to do solar power, store in a battery, and power a device like a Pi.

You can start from here https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465
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