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Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

kaspars.net

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Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#41

Post by hutzlibu »

sigstoat wrote: post #32
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.

you don't get a cookie for installing less panel. you just get headaches on low-sun days. and your battery won't last as long, as it has to discharge deeper and more often.

"$8 Raspberry Pi that supports the camera module. $29 Raspberry Pi Camera module. $18 any 12V battery capable of delivering 1.5W x 24h = 36Wh, such as this 7Ah Pb battery (80Wh). $8 dummy security camera. $132 100Wp solar panel. $10 12V charge controller. $15 cabling and connectors. Total: $220"

Since the solarpanel is more than half of the budget, I would think, you can actually buy a cookie for ordering a cheaper one.

I think it depends where you live and if the setup should also run in the winter.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#42

Post by hutzlibu »

penagwin wrote: post #30
ryanmarsh wrote: post #17

That’s an expensive way to build a crappy IP cam

I'd love a link to a commercial solar powered, weatherproofed, cellular IP Cam with an embedded computer that costs less then 200$ ;)

And where you know(almost for sure), it has no backdoors ...

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#44

Post by cr0sh »

Fnoord wrote: post #39

I guess one purpose of a mobile camera you can implement like that could be perimeter pen testing / red teaming. What did the author use their camera for? Does the Raspberry Pi Camera have an IR? How is the quality? Why didn't the author bother to hide the Pi and the camera better in the case? The pricing is dishonest. It first says "$8 Raspberry Pi that supports the camera module." and then later on it mentions Rasp…

There are many different kinds of cameras for the RasPi - some have IR illumination and/or filters removed, others don't. Some allow interchangeable lens, others are "fixed".

Quality can vary depending on the camera. I have a RasPi Zero W camera at my home (monitoring my front door and patio) that runs MotionEyeOS:

https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos

The camera is a tiny thing but 5 MP and color; quality has been very good in my opinion. Better than anything I could have bought at that price point (and certainly less intrusive - so many IP cameras require "cloud services" or something like that to work). Total cost for everything I used was well under $50.00 USD.

A cheaper option, which I am considering playing around with - but not as easy to set up - is this nice little module based around the ESP32:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32964004777.html

There are a few IP camera projects and github repos out there, but nothing anywhere near as polished as MotionEyeOS, yet.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#45

Post by cr0sh »

sigstoat wrote: post #38
ryanmarsh wrote: post #17

That’s an expensive way to build a crappy IP cam

the camera portion of this is comparable in price to the cheapest IP camera you can get out of china, and probably works better. even with the solar, it's cheaper than a nice IP camera from Axis.

Given what is shown, minus the solar panel part, you can create such an IP camera using a RasPi Zero W, one of the small 5 MP camera modules for the Pi, and a copy of MotionEyeOS - and do it all for under $50.00 USD.

I have such a camera monitoring a part of my house. That price figure is also using Amazon prices - I'm certain you could do it even cheaper through other sources.

Another option (which I posted in another comment to this) is this neat little module that I've been thinking of playing with sometime:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32964004777.html

Even via Amazon, you can get a pair of these for around $30.00 USD. Add some cheap enclosures, and a bit of codework (there's a few projects and github repos, but nothing polished) - and those would be some cheap, but nice, IP cameras.

No idea how well these (or even my RasPi system - my camera is indoors looking outside thru a window) would fair in the elements over a long period.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#46

Post by ldoughty »

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.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#47

Post by samstave »

el_benhameen wrote: post #25
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…

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

Talk to @james at https://communityphone.org/

They are YC alum.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#48

Post by samstave »

oh_sigh wrote: post #29
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?

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.

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#49

Post by gravelc »

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.

Just bought exactly that last week.

https://uk.pi-supply.com/products/pijuice-solar

Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera

#50

Post by pi-rat »

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.

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