Solar Powered Network

Scream · 2 Aug 2016 at 14:31

Several people have asked me to put a camera at the bottom of their driveway/lane way gates. Problem is, these gates can be 200-300 away from the house.

Running a fibre is a problem due to obstacles.

I was wondering if one could power a Ubiquiti wireless AP and a camera via solar power. I like to experiment so interested to see if this possible.

Some areas have access to the 4G network if that can help instead of using an AP,

bledd · 2 Aug 2016 at 14:54

This will be of use.

https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/tools/solar-calculator.html

I have no experience of doing this.

Are these gates powered? If so, then tap into that and add a Ubiquiti Nanostation M link, these work beautifully.

Scream · 2 Aug 2016 at 16:24

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the gates are not powered. Would have made it so much easier.

bigredshark · 2 Aug 2016 at 16:44

It's possible but you need to really watch your power budget and be incredibly pessimistic about the amount of sun you're likely to see. For your application I'd suggest the size of an appropriate capacity panel will be the big challenge.

From my limited experience, a 250w panel would be enough to keep things running through winter, that's in the region of a 1.5mx1m panel usually. Not huge but not trivial either.

Also, this will cost sufficient amounts of money for reliable wireless, panels and charge controllers that digging a 300m trench for power and network will look like a great bet and have lower ongoing maintenance costs too.

bledd · 2 Aug 2016 at 20:21

Scream said:
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the gates are not powered. Would have made it so much easier.

Suggest the upgrade to the gates

Caged · 2 Aug 2016 at 20:44

Presumably these people would also ideally have IR illumination so that things happening after dark can be recorded as well, at which point trying to run off batteries is a no-go.

bigredshark · 3 Aug 2016 at 09:01

Caged said:
Presumably these people would also ideally have IR illumination so that things happening after dark can be recorded as well, at which point trying to run off batteries is a no-go.

Not as completely as you'd think, LED IR options are available in the 20w range which would give reasonable coverage and still be just about feasible...keeping in mind that it'll only be used ~half the time so overall consumption is more reasonable than it first looks.

Still though, hiring a small digger, 300m of cable and and armoured conduit is still likely to be cheaper over even a short period of time (batteries in less than optimal environmental conditions with deep discharge cycles will not last that long...factor in replacing them every few years to costs)