
Solar Powered Raspberry Pi Camera - ingve
https://kaspars.net/blog/solar-raspberry-pi-camera
======
nevi-me
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 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.

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

~~~
oh_sigh
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/](https://hologram.io/pricing/)

is offering M2M sims for $1 per SIM per month + 40 cents per mb.

~~~
samstave
Yeah Hologram is cool but super expensive...

[https://communityphone.org/](https://communityphone.org/)

These guys can beat their prices. and are YC alum.

~~~
oh_sigh
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.

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winter_blue
The 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.

~~~
philipkglass
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.

~~~
Scoundreller
And this was a thin RV panel. Easier to mount on a pole than the “I care about
$/watt, not weight” panels.

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nanomonkey
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.

~~~
newnewpdro
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.

~~~
Scoundreller
What circuit do you use to power the laptop?

~~~
newnewpdro
It's an Allpowers 80W portable panel, which includes power circuits for two
USB ports and an 18VDC output.

My laptop accepts the 18VDC input directly. It works fine when the sun is high
and sky is clear, as long as I'm not doing anything particularly CPU/GPU
heavy.

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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.

~~~
gravelc
Just bought exactly that last week.

[https://uk.pi-supply.com/products/pijuice-solar](https://uk.pi-
supply.com/products/pijuice-solar)

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anfractuosity
Nice, 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.

~~~
Scoundreller
Immerse it in mineral oil?

(Not the camera of course!)

Or some kind of external watchdog timer circuit that resets the power if it
doesn’t get any input for 5 minutes?

~~~
anfractuosity
I hadn't thought of using mineral oil before.

I did actually try the hardware watchdog on the pi for a little bit, I might
have to have another look at that again.

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Fnoord
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 Raspberry Pi 3. AFAIK that does
not cost $8, and furthermore its missing on the other necessary components
such as a microSD card.

I'm using Xiaomi Dafang Hacks [1] right now, as I found that a cheap solution.
Approx 25 EUR for the Dafang camera. Its a MIPS machine.

[1] [https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-
Hacks](https://github.com/EliasKotlyar/Xiaomi-Dafang-Hacks)

~~~
cr0sh
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](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](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.

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

~~~
konstruktors
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.

~~~
mtw
ok, that makes sense. I thought it connects to a 3G/LTE network for internet
connection. There are a few Raspberry HAT that offers this -- although that
would be extremely costly for a live video feed

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

~~~
pi-rat
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.

~~~
konstruktors
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).

~~~
algaeontoast
There are actually quite a few well-developed IC's specifically intended for
this application. They act both as buck converters for the output device, BMS
for the lithium cell / cells, and a charge controller for the cells.

Andreas Spies has a great video on comparing some modern IC's for this ->
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaiQDS9jObY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaiQDS9jObY)

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dznodes
This is a great start but $220 seems expensive for this type of project. Isn't
there a less expensive setup possible?

~~~
blackflame7000
A lot of the cost comes from the solar panel. I wonder if it might be possible
to use a smaller panel with a battery storage device.

~~~
Scoundreller
And they seemed to use a more expensive thin and flexible panel.

It does make mounting easier and wind load less of an issue.

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amelius
I don't understand the RPi camera. It is lower quality than a webcam of the
same price, and it has an awkward connector, so you can't really use it more
than a few inches away from the RPi. Why not use a simple USB camera instead?

~~~
epmaybe
The csi interface doesn't take up as many CPU cycles, so if frame rate and
performance is important, or even power consumption, it's better.

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wcchandler
Wow. This just answered a big question I’ve been having. I’m starting a farm
this year on my parents property. I’d like to remotely monitor it in the most
scalable way. With resiliency being key. This is going to do great!

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megaremote
Wow surprised at the 100W solar panel. Is that overkill?

Still, very cool project.

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terminalhealth
Fwiw, afaik, cameras are relatively poor measures preventing burglary. By far
the most important factor is reinforced windows and doors.

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

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

;)

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

