Hello everyone, looks like we will start on building our dream home this year. I do want to set up a raspberry for automated photo shooting from the construction site. One picture per day is enough, I do want to create a timelapse video afterwards. The new neighbour is a friend, he allowed me to set up the camera in his house facing the construction site. Only problem he does not have a power supply at his window…
Anyone having experience with a solar module and a battery to power the raspi? Feel free to share your jdeas!
Is an extension cord really out of the question? Keeping a power bank running 24 hours a day means you will have to recharge it quite often, even if it is large, since the power bank circuitry itself consumes current proportional to its size, more or less. And a solar panel would have to be at least 1 foot on a side, maybe bigger, and facing the sun. Maybe not that practical for a window installation.
You might be better off scripting a phone. Maybe the phone can completely power itself off except for the minute or so per day where it would boot itself, take a picture, and power off again.
Given the relatively temporary nature of the use case, in your shoes I’d opt for a rechargeable power bank of some description instead of relying on a small solar set up.
I’ve used a dash camera connected to a power bank for a similar purpose. I’m sure an rpi would sip power in comparison.
Things to consider:
- Moisture and Humidity.
- Heat.
- Verification of operation.
- Theft.
- Hardware reliability.
- Cost per image.
A raspberry pi is not the type of device I’d recommend for this due to its reliance on a microSD card for its os installation. It will likely fail due to many read/write cycles. Replacing the card with a drive causes increased susceptibility to 1 and 2.
Consider the cost per photo as a metric. In the scheme of building a house, the cost for even a $1k purpose built solution is insignificant.
You can absolutely install a raspberry on a USB stick/SSD? I do it all the time?
Depending on OPs aptitude, they could have the Raspi connected to the internet and transmit the data immediately, bypassing a drive (though probably not a read/write cycle).
Could lift a page out of portable ops and use a LiFePo4 battery for power.
Just spitballin’.
How long before power is available on the job site? I have been involved in building houses and the power panel is the first wall to be built so that power is available to the crew. Could you strap the device to a tree and power off of a car battery until the on site power is available?
Using a large external power source with a power on/off timer, running only during daylight hours could save lots of watts.
I’ve looked into solar for a bird house camera and it was not a trivial project when you get to the short winter days and potentially cloudy skies.
Yeah, a proper solar setup would absolutely work - I did something similar with a Pi zero 2w and Motion OS. Actually Pi’s are fairly nice webcams for some speciality applications - e.g. when you want to use multiple cameras from the same device, need special cameras or want something done appliance-sided. And the form factor is decent with the RPI02w.
I intentionally didn’t use a solar panel as the main power source, but used a regular large USB battery with an analog timer/clock that simply powered the pi on for 20min a day and gave it enough time to take the picture and mail it to me. (I had WiFi at the site)
The solar panel was only an add-on to increase the time the battery lasted but it worked pretty well during the summer months. During winter it didn’t do too much, but that’s okay - I still got two weeks out of the USB battery which was pretty comfortable. I simply replaced the battery on the days I was on-site and never had a problem.
I now power a Lora to NB-IOT gateway with a complete solar kit, though with one of these camping kits that provide 60w and charge a battery. The NB IOT gateway takes 12w max(4w on average)so it is more than enough to both charge the battery and run the gateway even on cloudier winter days. But this project is in a pretty sunny spot and it’s placed outside - I would highly discourage you to use one of these in your friends house - the first set I had almost caught fire. No biggie in that location, huge problem if it is your friends home.
PS: Do you have a chance to use PoE maybe?
