
This Blog Is Now Running on Solar Power - louwrentius
https://louwrentius.com/this-blog-is-now-running-on-solar-power.html
======
zelly
Imagine a Raspberry Pi secured onto a tree somewhere being powered by a solar
panel and serving a website over 5G.

Imagine that Pi is running a SaaS product that generates revenue and pays for
its own 5G subscription.

Now imagine that Pi is earning Bitcoin, pays for its 5G in Bitcoin, and puts
up job postings online to get people (paid in Bitcoin) to provision and set up
more replica Pis on other random trees in town.

~~~
bouncycastle
Reality check time!

\- Raspberry Pi is way underpowered to run any SaaS on.

\- There are no 5g providers that would accept bitcoin as payment. Highly
unlikely there ever will be any.

\- Bitcoin's network is too congested for it to be used for trivial payments
such as subscriptions for SaaS.

\- A bitcoin node takes hundreds of GB of storage itself. Bandwidth costs will
probably be significant too. This means the SaaS would probably have a hard
time getting to break-even.

\- It may be more profitable to climb up the tree and steal the pi and then
take its bitcoin private key (assuming there is a hot wallet). Competing SaaS
may also look for rivals and take them down.

~~~
zelly
> Raspberry Pi is way underpowered to run any SaaS on.

Depends. Here's a random SaaS which I assume is making money:

[https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/11984](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/11984)

A URL shortening service. Yeah, I'm thinking this could fit on a Pi. Database
and everything on the SD card. Latency won't be great, but it should be
possible, especially if you rewrote it in Rust.

It doesn't have to run a Bitcoin fullnode. It can run a SPV wallet which would
take a few megabytes if that.

> take its bitcoin private key

Generate and store the key in a Hardware Security Module

The biggest killers are related to BTC. It would be difficult to pay for 5G
with BTC (although there probably could be workarounds like how Purse.io has
humans with credit cards buy your Amazon shopping carts in exchange for your
BTC) and also difficult to get subscription revenue in BTC. Something like
Libra could solve all these problems.

~~~
bad_user
Who would pay for a URL shortening service, especially one that can lose your
URLs?

~~~
raghavtoshniwal
Maybe? But only if it ran on a tree and was powered by the sun

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valw
WARNING: before anyone gets overenthusiastic, please observe that adopting
this setup probably caused more harm to the environment than it prevented.
Despite their romantic reputation, photovoltaics aren't green - they cost a
lot of (usually dirty) energy and precious metals to manufacture, and are not
renewable devices, so you want to make them count, i.e utilize them to a
significant fraction of their potential, especially so on a grid like the
Netherlands. This is not what this project is doing.

I'm absolutely sure the author means well and it sure is an interesting
exercise, but this is not what transitioning towards green IT looks like.
Sorry if this disappoints people's expectations, but these issues are more and
more overlooked.

(Can't give you numbers rn as I'm on my phone, but you can work them out from
e.g solar electricity emission factors)

~~~
ta17711771
> not renewable devices

If this means recyclable, that's slowly changing.

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welly
I like this project a lot and am inspired to do something similar. I'm a
liveaboard boater in the UK, I have a 55 foot narrowboat with 350w of solar on
the roof and a 550ah battery bank. I could probably run my own little server
similar to yours pretty much 24/7 as when I'm not using solar to charge the
battery bank, I'm using the boat's engine to recharge.

So not quite as green but during the months from April to September, the solar
panels are enough to charge the batteries every day.

My modem/router uses 4g, it's a Teltonika rut950 that is using OpenWRT and has
GPS built in which I've been keen to make use of.

I'm definitely inspired to do something like you've built!

~~~
louwrentius
Thank you, I would recommend to go for it. Would be nice to tie the GPS into
some blog that would track where you are (aproximation for privacy reasons
maybe).

A floating solar-powered server, should be nice!

~~~
hugey010
Floating solar powered server buoys, anyone?

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jcun4128
Is it always on? This is really cool. I like the idea of self-sustaining
electronics(robotics in particular).

I wonder if there's any gain using a UBEC or something vs. the car cigarette
lighter usb thing you're using to jump from 12V to 5V.

Edit: yeah I was going to say, I think I saw someone do a toolbox build before
where it was solar powered/had a GSM module in it for communication... but I
don't think it was a website, still neat.

~~~
mycall
For self-sustaining robotics, do they oil themselves?

~~~
jcun4128
Haha, yeah it was a bit vague.

I have fantasies about building small drone submarines and releasing them in
the ocean. Those I don't know how they'd sustain themselves. A little ground
rover that has panels on it sounds more realistic. And yeah the life span I
don't know how long they would last for.

But on a farm or homestead I would like to have little solar-powered wheel-
driven drones pretty much that run around and do their own thing.

It would be neat though, have a sat module on the drone submarine, and then
the sub surfaces at night. I think at my local lake is more realistic. Of
course in reality these things would operate in supervision/not break laws.
But I saw an intriguing video [1] before and I don't know... it's
personification I guess.

[1] [https://youtu.be/0iDBF23gI6I?t=52](https://youtu.be/0iDBF23gI6I?t=52)

~~~
NortySpock
"little solar-powered wheel-driven drones"

You may be interested to learn that a company is already doing this, with the
"Tertill", a small solar powered random-walk weed eater.

[https://franklinrobotics.com/](https://franklinrobotics.com/)

~~~
jcun4128
Yeah I saw that recently I think it's cool. The wheel design is interesting, I
don't know how effective that little weed whacker it has is. I was also
surprised how small the panels seem.

edit: I follow this one guy on YouTube he built this thing [1], that's the
basic idea. It doesn't really have a purpose, but it's cool.

In the long run though, imagine you're gone(passed on) and you built some
robot that's out there still doing its thing. Probably talking RTG/space more
like, than something on Earth that erodes.

[1] [https://youtu.be/nv2FbwjIZRE?t=8](https://youtu.be/nv2FbwjIZRE?t=8)

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louwrentius
As stated in the blog, my solar panel produces way more power during 'peak
solar' moments than both the Pi and the battery can consume (charging).

So I'm trying to keep my iPad charged up with this setup too (kind of a
hobby). So you may notice during the day that the solar production is 60+ watt
and the load could be similar.

~~~
qqqwerty
Nice! A few days ago I dusted off some cheap panels I had lying around and
started using them to charge my phone and other devices. I figured since I was
WFH might as well put those panels to use. The added bonus is that now that I
am charging my phone during the day, I am less likely to use it.

I was also planning on doing something similar to your setup which is why I
had the panels in the first place. I have a backyard with decent sun exposure,
so compared to your setup, it would almost be cheating.

Maybe a blogroll of solar powered blogs is in order!

~~~
louwrentius
Thank you. Please pull through on your project, to start a movement :)

Just reuse an old car battery from craigslist or something to power the setup
during the night.

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louwrentius
It is a fun little hobby project. I enjoyed building it, although it's quite
simple.

I must say that the load on the battery is not equal exactly to the actual
load because the solar charge controller doesn't seem as precise in its
measurements unfortunately.

~~~
louwrentius
It seems that HN is now hitting my Pi 'hard' but it doesn't even register on
the CPU (5% across cores).

I do notice a small increase in power usage. I wish I had implemented a
mechanism to share my Grafana dashboard tracking my solar metrics. (sorry)

~~~
vvanders
It's a neat project, we added solar based watering to our greenhouse and
having grafana as a dashboard was super handy.

Renogy's Rover MMPT chargers speak modbus over rs232 so you can interface it
directly with a PLC or other industrial automation tools. The whole thing is
self sufficient and was a real blast to put together.

~~~
louwrentius
That sounds awesome! Do you have a writeup about that somewhere? Would be nice
to share! I love self-sustaining solutions.

~~~
vvanders
Not yet although I've been considering it.

There's a lot of things that are really handy but not easily searchable(like
din rails, they're the lego blocks of industrial automation) which I think
would be neat to aggregate in one space.

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louwrentius
I would like to see Applied Science (Ben Krasnow) to power his website/blog
with nuclear power.

I am serious.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Many blogs are probably powered by nuclear power :-)

~~~
louwrentius
That's also true of solar power :-)

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agustif
Love both this and lowtechmag projects,

cant wait to get the time/excuse to do this for my own personal website which
doesn't exist yet lol

~~~
louwrentius
Low-tech magazine is really worth a visit:

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com)

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bpodgursky
Aha, finally a GOOD reason for a website to only work 9-5 business hours!

~~~
louwrentius
I have to thank Gaston Planté for giving me a way to power my blog when the
sun goes down.

Don't let the sun, go down on me...

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jlg23
Nice write-up of a nice project!

BUT: This is clearly missing a power saving mode which displays a placeholder
page with a cache expiration time set based on weather forecasts. And an 8bit
song "Ain't no content when it rains" to the melody of "Ain't No Sunshine" ;)

~~~
louwrentius
Thank you, I will put it on my list for improvements ;-)

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manquer
Very cool project . Not to be pendatic , there is lot network equipment
between request and the cluster which still very much run on non renewable
power.

Once starlink is live , perhaps requests between two phased array clients can
make networks truly solar .

~~~
louwrentius
That is true and addressed as an issue in the blog (to be transparent). It's a
problem low-tech magazine also faces and wants to improve.

I'm in an apartment and my solar is in a terrible spot. The solar array is
crazy over-sized to provide enough power to sustain the Pi and charge the
battery.

I think it's easily doable for a person with good solar to put the entire
chain Pi-switch-modem on solar.

~~~
manquer
I did not mean the blog owner’s equipment which the author covered in the
post. I meant the ISPs and transit providers in between the server and any
user wanting to see the blog. There is not much we can do to control the power
sources in that .

While undersea cables and ISP network switches etc perhaps are efficient on a
per packet level, they consume substantial power I would imagine .

~~~
louwrentius
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood.

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fluffernutter
I ran an esp8266 running a website on Python, powered by a 9V battery.

~~~
louwrentius
Awesome! You have a url or blogpost about it? Now put it on solar :-)

~~~
fluffernutter
Here's the Lua version being discussed: [https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-
firmware](https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware)

Here's the Python version: [https://cuneyt.aliustaoglu.biz/en/installing-
micropython-for...](https://cuneyt.aliustaoglu.biz/en/installing-micropython-
for-esp8266/)

------
aimor
If you don't mind my asking, what was the total cost for this project? I run a
lot of website projects off of Pi-0Ws and have been poking around with doing a
solar project myself.

~~~
louwrentius
Controller is about 70 euro's. Buck converter (not documented but added) 7
euro. Panel was 110 Euro. Extra Sensor was 10 euro. Car battery was free.
Maybe + 20 for cables and connectors.

Frankly, I'm not sure how economical it is, but it is fun to me.

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lxe
I wonder if it's possible to take it a step further and make the pieces that
connect the server to the internet (modem, the cable infrastructure, etc...)
to run off the grid?

~~~
louwrentius
I wish I could, but I can't. During rainy days, I can't even support the Pi.

This is mostly because my solar panel is in a terrible spot and I had to over-
size it just to get enough power.

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kebman
Is this so great? There was some wind power controversy with the Gibbs
documentary _Planet of the Humans._ As I've understood, there are some
concerns also with solar power, especially due to the rare earths needed for
the construction of such panels. I mean, sure, I love the thought of being
self-sufficient and get off the grid, but why are they then also taxing solar
cell panels to death?

~~~
louwrentius
It seems that reputable Scientists refute the main points as stated by this
'documentary'.

~~~
kebman
IDK. A municipality of Kvaløya in Norway were warned against even _touching_
their own tap water, after highly toxic machine oil used to lube windmills had
leaked into their reservoire of drinking water. I know this, because I grew up
there. So windmills aren't all fun and games, and IMHO their power efficiency
is questionable compared to their many alternatives. Norway used to rely
solely on hydropower, and were self-sufficient on this resource for many
years, but in the latter years, the developement of windmills instead of
hydropower seems to be more of a political move than a scientific, or even
economic one. Or, well, it's certainly good for _someone 's_ economy... But
for most people it's just far more expensive, and far less efficient. And, as
I've already stated, it can even be dangerous. On top of this, the blades cut
down all kinds of birds, and in particular eagles, which is kind of a big deal
in Norway since many of these species are on the "Red List" (i.e. in danger of
becoming extinct).

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jwillmer
I'm currently working in my spare time one something similar but with a focus
on a water tight box with a solar panel that I can place anywhere:
[https://jwillmer.de/blog/projects/independent-iot-system-
par...](https://jwillmer.de/blog/projects/independent-iot-system-part-1)

------
louwrentius
Please note that mobile users - due to my bad mobile layout - will find the
solar stats at the bottom of the page (lot of scrolling).

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fsckboy
The blog is still "wasting" or "leveraging" the same amount of power as it did
before.

The money invested / and the solar cells could have been used to mitigate the
carbon footprint for other power uses, but instead it's being used here for
the blog. Shutting down the blog is how to get back ahead, if your goal is to
reduce carbon footprint.

just pointing out that the carbon footprint of the blog and the carbon
mitigation of the investment are independent events, they don't need to be
tied together.

~~~
louwrentius
I think this is addressed in the blog, the current setup with the VPS is not
gaining anything.

------
louwrentius
So, who is going to run a solar-powered k8s cluster based on a bunch of
Raspberry Pi 4's and host something more significant?

~~~
other_herbert
A single pi4 has an impressive amount of processing power...

In my day job I'm a .net and react guy and I made a proof of concept for a
next version of a possible product (tech preview, to show the people that
their estimates were just insane - on the high side) on a pi 4, running in
.net core on manjaro on my pi4.. this is a fairly intensive thing, using
signalR with lots of messaging going on and cpu usage is ~10% at peak...

So.. my next task will be to run that on solar too :D

~~~
louwrentius
I hope you will do that. Please put it on solar :-) and blog.

We ran the web on pentiums, a Pi - especially the 4 - should be able to do
this without problems.

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mbgerring
I assume you're paying for a static IP from your ISP, or is there some other
way you're routing traffic to the server?

~~~
NorwegianDude
Even without a static IP, it usually won't change that often. If it does
change, then you can always update your DNS with the new IP automatically.

~~~
miteyironpaw
Quite often ISPs chuck you behind a NAT now which makes things harder.

~~~
jxcl
I have never encountered this! I’m in the USA. Which ISPs?

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jimnotgym
Rather than vps backup, why not use your house mains supply as a backup?

~~~
louwrentius
That is a good point.

Originally, I was planning on doing so! I have all the ingredients (relais and
charger) to do so.

Maybe I will implement it at some point.

~~~
jimnotgym
How would you do it? Would it work to just connect the mains charger to the
battery and have it kick in once the battery has reached 70% charge?

