Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
kaspars.net
Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#2100W 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.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#3100W 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.
~30-40 W would be my guess, given both Camera, and WiFi are active. (PiZero-W is rated 1.2A max)
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#4100W 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.
~30-40 W would be my guess, given both Camera, and WiFi are active. (PiZero-W is rated 1.2A max)
FWIW, idle draw on my Pi4 4GB is 0.6A with one HDMI display connected and one wireless keyboard USB transceiver.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#5The solar panel at $132, accounted for 60% of the total cost (of $220). For a 100W panel, $132 is actually a good price, since it comes out to $1.32 per watt. Regardless, as nanomonkey mentioned, a lower-panel panel (perhaps a 50W one) would likely have sufficed. But even a 50W panel, at $1.32 per watt, would have cost $66.
I'm hoping for the day where we can print solar panels as cheaply as we print paper.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
~30-40 W would be my guess, given both Camera, and WiFi are active. (PiZero-W is rated 1.2A max)
FWIW, idle draw on my Pi4 4GB is 0.6A with one HDMI display connected and one wireless keyboard USB transceiver.
It might be easier for the reader, if we all used watts (W) when referring to power usage. Amperes (A) are useless without knowing the voltage (V). In the case of the Pi, since it runs on 5 V USB power, it was easy to calculate the wattage. But for devices of unknown voltage, amperes tell you nothing about power consumption. (For reference: a Pi at 1.2 A is using 6 W, and a Pi at 0.6 A is using 3 W.)
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#7100W 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.
It's not like overkill in the solar panel department is harmful, especially if you're getting cheap chinesium stuff off ebay.
Nothing helps functioning in low-light situations, like overcast and cloudy days, better than excess panel area.
I have a minimally-sized panel I use for powering a laptop and it's rather annoying to have it underpowered in the slightest deviation from ideal circumstances. That same panel for charging smaller devices over USB like phones and tablets is an absolute dream thanks to the overkill, even overcast and cloudy days it never quits charging.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#8The solar panel at $132, accounted for 60% of the total cost (of $220). For a 100W panel, $132 is actually a good price, since it comes out to $1.32 per watt. Regardless, as nanomonkey mentioned, a lower-panel panel (perhaps a 50W one) would likely have sufficed. But even a 50W panel, at $1.32 per watt, would have cost $66. I'm hoping for the day where we can print solar panels as cheaply as we print paper.
Panels are ~30 cents per watt, wholesale. But that's for the larger panels generating 250+ watts that are commonly used for solar farms and distributed generation. 50 and 100 watt panels are manufactured in much smaller quantities and will cost more.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#9Reading 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 implications they bring?
They do bring a bit of bulkiness on the Pi, and are easy to steal, but then if one can access the modem, the whole Pi might be at risk too.
Re: Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera
#10Nice, wouldn't mind trying something like that myself. I'm not sure if we get enough sun though ;)
I put a PiZeroW in our garden as a wildlife camera in an IP68 case with a waterproof USB connector for power, but alas sometimes it possibly overheats or becomes unresponsive and requires switching it off/on again. (It hit around 90C once, I have since added a little heat sink, but not sure how much that helps in a closed case).
I also found I had to slightly overvolt the PiZero in the config to get the camera to function correctly.
I've been trying to see if there's any interesting serial output when it becomes unresponsive by adding an ESP32 to it. But I haven't quite got the hang of programming that yet.