Powering my Raspberry Pi's from Solar power
The Basics
In this post I will describe the basics of how my Raspberry Pi's receive power from my solar power system. I will describe in more detail the setup and wiring of my solar power system and how it works in another post.
Solar Panels
These are the two 80 watt solar panels on a DIY rack that charge my solar batteries.
Charge Controller
This is the solar charge controller which takes the power from the solar panels and safely manages the charging voltage level of batteries.
Solar Batteries
These are 4 225Ahr 6 volt batteries wired in series/parallel to create a 12Volt battery pack
RPi power distribution
This is a basic look at how I distribute the 12Volt battery power to a couple of Raspberry Pi's that run 24/7. On the right hand side is a DIY setup of a 12Volt to 5Volt step down converter connected to a DIY USB buss bar.
One of those Raspberry Pi's is currently running a Python program that comunicates with the solar charge controller and logs (once per minute) the voltage and current measured in relation to the solar panels and solar batteries. With future Python programming I should be able to display the kilowatts collected from my solar panels.
The second Raspberry Pi currently is capturing a serial data stream to a text file from the following device to measure battery state of charge and watts into and out of the Batteries.
Eventually as I progress in my Python programming experience I will be able to capture the serial data stream for logging and visual diaplay of the state of charge and kilowatts used per day.
[Special thanks to @rishi556 and the gang on the Platforms discord for asking me to document how I power my Raspberry Pi's from solar]
How much do you think you save monthly with the solar panels?
For this purpose very little, I pay 6 cents/kilowatt hour right now, but it is a great learning process.
This looks like fantastic work @mytechtrail!
I've always been a fan of solar. and I'm just getting into those microprocessors.
Last Christmas I did a small light show. It was my first experience...and it was fun!
Yes, the uses are endless, only the imagination of the user. I especially like the fact that their are two Rpi's on the ISS.
Thats just beautiful!!! Now lets pray for no more cloudy days!
So true, had a couple of times this winter where I had 3 or 4 days of clouds and need to charge the batteries with a charger.
awesome! , just dont own a cat
Why not, our cat rarely comes down to the man cave. Plus most of my Raspberry Pi's are up on a shelf.
Amazing ~