Cheap Solar Led Hack

[tired rain]

Here is the final version of elevated SMA antenna mount for pole ziptie.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/71b55f121e75b59cc458d217/w/5cb3688ce11b624981d412e3/e/fd68181190950d769c16a475

[olive citrus]

Still a bad DNS server. Maybe your ISP caches webpages?

Remember, your ISP is not your friend.

[brave pecan]

so i adapted this mount for an N from sma -- it fits together but havent tested further

[tired rain]

@olive citrus why are you sure it was DNS related?

[south pebble]

@brave pecan

😘

This should make it easier to mod

[brave pecan]

I should’ve asked 🙂 thank you!

here's my redraw from the mesh stl

Gonna try to wire in one of these I think. Battery got way low when I left it inside over the weekend

[olive citrus]

Yeah most likely a caching server issue, unless there was an announcement

So the DNS would reference the caching server first

I had 0 outage and I have my DNS server set to a set of ipv6 servers in my pihole

[olive citrus]

Are you using the led driver board?

#1198011215025283124 message
Like this

The chip should cut off the battery at a certain voltage

And I put in a pair of schottky diodes to make the battery output less than It actually has.

That way the cutoff happens sooner

[brave pecan]

I didn’t but maybe next time I pull it down!

Just mounted it!

What do yall think? Thanks @south pebble for the mount, it’s minimal and perfect for my use case!

[tired rain]

@brave pecanClever way of using the anteanna as the main mount point.

Here is my custome weather station build. Serial data from the ws80 weather station to the Rak

[quaint steppe]

very clean

[brave pecan]

Ty!

[brave pecan]

Nice!! Do you have a BOM or any guide you followed. A weather station is on my list

[tired rain]

@brave pecanThis setup is a serious hack challenge but was pretty fun to do. The pdf is in german too so even extra trickier. Google image translate individual pages was required. The weather unit is a Ecowitt WS-80.

Serial wires go down through the tube into the Rak solar unit.

[brave pecan]

Ty!

[olive citrus]

I'm getting 90+km with this btw

[glacial wave]

Goodness

[honest basalt]

12-24ft painters pole at Lowe's.

I just drilled out the holes in the piece to make them larger and now the end of a paint roller fits through them.

Adding some liquid tape for weatherproofing and it should be good to go.

Portable antenna mast for $20.

[tired rain]

How it is not flipping down in the wind?

That's not the same mounting

[quaint ore]

nice, they have a bigger one last i checked

i did similar with a pool pole

[honest basalt]

Yeah that first photo there was just a test. I had to drill away some plastic before I could get it to fit.
I've got it tied down against the metal up top now. Very steady.

[quaint steppe]

seems to be holding up somewhat, did see like 70% humidity after a rainstorm

https://puu.sh/K8SiW/8c7b35f039.png

[olive citrus]

I am really worried about my device.

It is not coming back online

[faint apex]

Didn't know this projects existed! Just used the H.F. solar 'spotlight' ($9 U.S.) to make a working MT node: #solar-power message

[olive citrus]

How are you dealing with the battery being lifepo4?

[olive citrus]

Also you need to.Seal that thing up better, the box is SUPER leaky

How are you making the light functional?

What if we replace the light with something glow in the dark

Or batteries and a USB wire

[tired rain]

@faint apexWelcome to the club. I guess I should change the name to just Cheap Solar LED Hack

Cheap Solar Led Hack

[olive citrus]

I agree, since all the hinge parts look universal-ish

[tired rain]

Did your device come back online ?

[olive citrus]

No, apparently will in June of next year though 👀

Pro tip don't use a heltec

Don't use an esp32 device unless you can cut off the battery supply or can guarantee that it'll have enough power

If you cut the battery supply, it won't go into ultra deep sleep

I know exactly what happened

When I was testing it, it was surrounded by buildings and did just fine because it couldn't really see any other nodes

No packets to forward

Up on the pole it could likely see dozens of people, and was constantly replaying messages

I could see Lancaster and possibly philly

Also maybe easton?

The antenna is low dbi, but I'm gonna swap.It with a higher dbi antenna when I go back

[tired rain]

Yeah. Rak for remotes all the way.

[faint apex]

Yes, worried about that as well. Did some testing and sealed the on/off button with silicone sealant.

[faint apex]

Fwiw: it comes with a Li-Ion 3.7v 18500 battery, not a Lifepo4. See image in post.

[faint apex]

Light is not functional, tho that'd be very cool.

[olive citrus]

HUH

Mine has a lifepo4

[winter coral]

Where did you get it? Mine is identical to yours but I got it at Home Depot. They are different than the Harbor Fright model that @faint apex posted in #solar-power message

[olive citrus]

Idk I think my dad got it at harbor freight

Does your hack charge the battery?

Mine... Doesn't seem to be

[quaint steppe]

your setup goes a bit further no?

[olive citrus]

No, mine died on the pole from low battery

[quaint steppe]

mine stays charged between 85 to 100%

[olive citrus]

And the one in the window is at 57% when Yesterday it was at 70%

It could be my diodes.

[quaint steppe]

i did forgo the diodes to keep it simple

[olive citrus]

It shows 4.24v on the rak at the led port when the sun is on it

[quaint steppe]

bit too long ago to remember what i measured with the multimeter

[olive citrus]

I have a dual schottky system that lowers the voltage both going in and out of the battery so maybe it's that

[quaint steppe]

and you power a rak with it?

[olive citrus]

Yellow and black

I'm also using the original battery now

[glacial wave]

The original battery is plenty good enough

[olive citrus]

I know, that is why I'm usingit

[quaint steppe]

cant see anything obviously wrong

[olive citrus]

What is the % voltage drop of a schottky diode here?

Because maybe it'll only show 60% charge

Maybe it is at 80% right now

[quaint steppe]

sorry i haven't looked it up

[olive citrus]

My schottky diodes drop the voltage and it's going both ways. Someone thought it might be 20%...

20+20=40

We will see tomorrow I guess

[quaint steppe]

ye it should charge fully after half a day in the bright sun

[olive citrus]

Wrong.

My shottky diodes prevent it from charging all the way

[quaint steppe]

ah yes

[olive citrus]

And they also cause the voltage cutoff to trigger earlier

The battery should have 20% (could be a wrong number) capacity left when the cutoff triggers

So I'm thinking that my system could be fine and that I'm just confused

If the voltage drop is 0.4v, it makes complete sense

[quaint steppe]

you have a multimeter to test?

[olive citrus]

That means the battery is currently at 80%, which is a full charge

[olive citrus]

Yes but I don't wanna open my perfectly sealed box 🤪

[quaint steppe]

aha i understand xD

[olive citrus]

I do have an extra set of diodes

Should I go get them and test the voltage drop on a battery?

[quaint steppe]

i have no experience with that so i cant give good advice 😅

was just thinking bout measuring the battery voltage directly in the morning and afternoon

[olive citrus]

The voltage drop that i just measured is negligible somehow

4.09 vs 4.08v

[olive citrus]

@quaint steppe So I talked to someone who knows their stuff and apparently the diodes use power when they are dropping the voltage...

Like, a lot of power...

The solar panel barely keeps up with charging the battery when the sun is fully on it.

A whole .4w constantly being used in addition to everything else

We will have to go without the diodes.

[olive citrus]

@quaint steppe I think the diodes were working as expected

I removed them

It shows 87%

I think we're better off without the diodes though.

[olive citrus]

My LED light is enough to charge it at full power:

[quaint steppe]

Hmm didn't know that

[tired rain]

I'm not sure why the diodes in hyper's setup didn't work. I've got a node with the two diodes and a one with just the one diode and they are working fine.

[olive citrus]

I think they did work

I was being confused by the voltage

Additionally, the reason my heltec probably died is because I calculated for a full battery, not a limited battery.

[olive citrus]

Is this an okay voltage to charge these batteries to?

It is the original battery that came with the device.

[honest basalt]

Has anyone tested this setup with a Heltic V3 Tracker?

I know it uses significantly more power than the rak. And it's also got GPS.

I ordered a few of them because they were on sale on Ali for $20 each. It would be really awesome if it would work with a cheap panel like these as a case/power. But I'm not expecting a yes.

[lime jetty]

I've been trying to find one these poles for a while now. They had one when I went to get something else, but I didn't have the solar node yet. Now I can't find one and I'm kicking myself.

[olive citrus]

Yes but it runs the battery out in about a week

And then it goes into super deep sleep mode for 365 days where it can't do anything

[brave pecan]

Put my diodes in today @olive citrus 🙂 ran it for a week on a flagpole upside down, since it flipped in the storm and —- interestingly it’s dry and just fine with the stock seal. I did fix the “button folded gasket” issue others have noted but I haven’t added any grease or changed other gaskets yet. Pretty happy with this!

[tired rain]

@brave pecan nice. That's been my experience as well.

[glacial wave]

So far I haven’t had any leaks with the stock seal as well and mine have gone through tornados

[olive citrus]

I greased mine up because I'm never going to take it back down and it's going to be up too high to service

Stock seal is probably fine, but I do not want to chance it.

[olive citrus]

The reason why I'm using 2 diodes inline with the battery is so that the low voltage emergency shutoff feature triggers sooner.

[olive citrus]

Your current setup could just completely kill battery if the solar part stops working

It's okay though

The panel is more than enough to make the battery happy

[brave pecan]

Yea I added the diodes to the charging side. So it’ll help with longevity

[brave pecan]

But correct the RAK will drain the battery indefinitely with no cutoff in my setup

[olive citrus]

The charging chip is also a LED driver, and it does have a cutoff 😉

For your next node

Also you can turn off the LED with the button... And then all you have to do is make the chip think that it's always nighttime (remove 1 part on the board)

[brave pecan]

Yea I plan to do that for the next one 😉 wondering if Lowe’s will have another sale!

[tired rain]

New position for when antenna pigtail isn't long enough.

[quaint steppe]

that looks exactly like mine except i even flipped it over to get more reach xD

holding up well so far
only thing that worries me is that the environment metrics sometimes drop out for a few hours 😅

[tired rain]

How is that mounted? Looks like it might just blow right off.

[quaint steppe]

zip tied to the outside of a pvc cable pipe, trough the 3d printed mounting hinge #1198011215025283124 message

instead of screwed

[tired rain]

Yeah, zip ties are my preferred method too.

[red pike]

Do zip ties hold up well outside long term?

I used these on main solar node because I wasn't sure about zip ties.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PDSLWN6/

[tired rain]

@red pike they make uv resistant ones

[red pike]

Nice, I didn't know about those. I'll have to pick some up. Cheaper than hose clamps.

[olive citrus]

anyone see any good enclosures?

I've changed my stance on the diodes again

we need the voltage drop diodes for longevity

when the board reports around 50-60%, the battery is actually at 80%

I have not seen my node have it's power cut off yet

it should theoretically cut off at around 20% capacity, but we would need a nuclear winter or a large plastic bag or 200mph straightline winds for that to happen.

when I pass by it in the daytime, it reports that it's plugged in. At nighttime, it doesn't even drop below 40%!

(40%==battery at around 60%)

this only really works with a nrf52

[tired rain]

@olive citrushave you seen the battery state deteriorate from full charging ? or do you just want it for early cutoff ?

[olive citrus]

I have not actually seen any battery degradation, however it is guaranteed that lithium batteries will deteriorate over time if you charge them to 100%

So the diodes in there will limit the full charge to ~80% (depending on temperature)

in the winter, they'll limit the charging less because of the cold temps, so some extra heat will be generated, and the battery will stay warmer

The diodes are directly on the + contact of the battery

[fading lichen]

I've been working on a small solar node PCB for use with similar solar LED lamps at walmart/etc. To everyone's dismay I'm using ESP32C3 instead of nRF52 🙂

[tired rain]

Why are you using the esp32c3 anyway ?

@fading lichen

[fading lichen]

I don't like nRF52 (I've developed code in a professional capacity for both nRF and ESP32) since they went full Zephyr, ESP32 power consumption can be made low enough to be comparable with nRF52 (at least outside of platformio, I'm relatively new to pio and have been banging my head against its walls for the last month or so), and esp32 development is easier to explore some interesting avenues (mesh-compatible firmware updates, etc.). I mean since I don't really want a 2.4G radio anyway I could just replace it with an STM32 and be done, but that's not a direction I'm planning on taking at the moment

[tired rain]

are you planning on developing alternative firmware ?

[fading lichen]

one thing the nRF devices have that the ESP32s don't (or at least not readily available, I think C6 has it) is the ability to natively support Zigbee. THAT would be pretty nifty.

[tired rain]

we should probably move this converstation over #esp32 though.

[fading lichen]

not at this time -- I am not convinced that platformio is the issue, I'm sure it's between my ears and relatively inexperience with platformio. Besides, porting radiolib and the meshtastic code would be a serious undertaking

[peak goblet]

Hey all- I’m attempting to make this right now. I bought the solar light and modified it by removing the resistors from R1, R2, and R6. I left the R6 connection separate, but bridged R1 with a wire and also bridged R2 with a wire. I removed the existing LED+ and LED- connections to the light and instead wired LED+ to the plus side of the BATT terminal on my RAK board, and LED- to the negative side. My battery measures 3.7v so I think it should be charged enough to turn on the RAK board (I’ve already set up the board previously so I know it works) but I’m getting no lights. I tried toggling the on off button but still no lights. I’m leaving it plugged in with the battery charging for a little longer, but I’m thinking I must have something wrong with my electrical connections. First, are all my steps correct and did I miss any? Second, any suggestions on troubleshooting? I have a multimeter but besides measuring resistance I’m not sure what else to use it for.

FWIW I also tried wiring to the solar connection on the RAK board too, with no luck.

[tired rain]

@peak gobletI don't wire in to the LED+and LED- connections. I go straight into the battery instead.

[peak goblet]

Oh interesting. I saw that was the original plan from hackaday, but I was under the impression that to use the on/off switch (which is why I made those circuit modifications) I needed to use the LED+/- pads. Is that not correct?

[tired rain]

What I do to make the button work is connec the negative from the rak to the certain point on the solar PCB. lemme get the picture.

Where the yellow wire is connect is the GND for the RAK

And the positive directly to battery positive

or through a diode to the battery + if you want.

[peak goblet]

Gotcha, ok I hope my other edits to the board (removing the resistors at R1, R2, and R6) will not prevent me from connecting the way you have

[olive citrus]

This looks correct! Maybe clean up your board with a toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol

Oh oh I see what you did

You connected the battery to the solar input on the board lol

Unscrew the charging board, there are labels underneath and there's likely a defect in how the gasket was installed! @peak goblet

Don't forget to remove the battery first! I blew up one of my boards that way 😅

S for solar, B for battery

[peak goblet]

So I didn’t rewire anything on the back of the board, what did you want to look at here?

[red pike]

Check the rubber gasket/button. Yours looks ok from that pic. In a lot of units the sides are folded over and it doesn't seal properly.

[peak goblet]

Oh so my button might be faulty and that’s what causing my node not to power on? I’m not sure that’s it, as I did make sure the light turned on before I opened it up for the first time, but I can check that the button depresses now that I’ve taken it apart

[red pike]

The rubber part of the button is what he mentioned checking as there's often a problem there down the road with moisture. I don't know if he was suggesting that as a fix for your current issue.

Just something good to check before hanging it outside anyway.

[olive citrus]

Gasket, check for folds:

I'm guessing that the discount at Lowe's a while ago was because the gaskets weren't watertight, and they decided to sell through them before anyone noticed.

Now, for the button, do you have a multimeter? Switch to the setting where it beeps when you touch the probes together, and then measure between each point.

It looks to me like your solder points aren't good enough though. Dump some flux on each point and sizzle it in!

Also toothbrush the board with some isopropyl alcohol

Your solder points should all look like mounds of rice

[brave pecan]

Posted this today, tried to capture some of the improvements from this chat. Leme know if I missed anything https://www.printables.com/model/958722-meshtastic-harbor-breeze-solar-panel-n-type-antenn

[tired rain]

@brave pecanNice. I like that the mounting is handled by the antenna hardware not. probably very sturdy.

[brave pecan]

It’s been working well it’s all pretty light. I wondered about transferring a load onto the N antenna. I’m sure it’s not a best practice (-:

[olive citrus]

@peak goblet did you figure it out?

You could try using thicker wire, and going from the bottom of the holes so you know there's a clean connection... that's what I did at least.

[peak goblet]

I haven’t tried to resolder it all yet, but I will

[olive citrus]

Use flux!

[olive citrus]

https://a.co/d/ezJ6k5Z

[next needle]

What bulkhead pigtail are you using with that adapter/mount? The one I got on Amazon does not fit in that hole.

I have an ALFA AOA-915-5ACM 5 dbi Omni Outdoor 915MHz 802.11ah Mini LoRa Antenna

[next needle]

Also, how did you guys got rid of the sticky residue left behind after peeling off the label?

[tired rain]

the label on the solar panel ?

[next needle]

yes

[tired rain]

hmm. i haven't notice any. But some alcohol would probably do it. Try pulling very slowly.

[next needle]

i tried, that sucker was not letting go

harbor breez needs to rethink their label placement

i tried rubbing alcohol and it's making more of a mess than cleaning

i hope i did not damage the panel

[tired rain]

damn. that's weird.

[olive citrus]

Freezer

Remove the battery first tho

[red pike]

Yeah that sounds familiar. I think I used Goo Gone and a rag. Was a PITA

[brave pecan]

Oh interesting! I just measured the one I got off Ali. Let me find it. If you give me the dimensions I’m happy to modify for yours!

[brave pecan]

NM it was from RAK https://store.rakwireless.com/products/ipex-to-n-type-gps-antenna-connector

[brave pecan]

soak with alcohol, be veerrrry carful with a rarzor blade as close to parallel as you can to scrape the majority off then work the rest of the residue without the blade but more alcohol

[next needle]

I managed to go slowly with rubbing alcohol and get it cleaned, but man that was annoying.

[next needle]

Yeah, waiting for another one to come in today for amazon, if they dont work, i'd appreciate you modifying your model. Here is what I got from Amazon, they look very similar to what you got from RAK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09N3L8HDK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

In the second picture, you can see the white lines and those are the result of glue not wanting to come off and lots of rubbing alcohol.

[brave pecan]

do you have a caliper to get exact measurements?

[next needle]

i do, still waiting for delivery, will provide dimensions once I have it in my hands

[next needle]

Let me know if you have any questions.

[olive citrus]

Can you provide the source of your mousepad?

[olive citrus]

I was thinking, and the ones with the sticker are not the ones you should buy. Stickered panels are the store display models. The normal ones have a plastic hanging tag on them that you can cut off

[tired rain]

That last few ones i've bought have had a full sticker covering the entire solar panel. I think they just changed the packaging and some of the stickers are too sticky,

[next needle]

Amazon: https://a.co/d/8iLlzue

[next needle]

correct!

[brave pecan]

So it looks like your "base" is 1mm wider then mine was, but the rest of the dimensions are the same. I'll make the base hole 24mm

@next needle see if you like those dimensions

[next needle]

This fits perfectly thanks. Gotta figure out how to keep the cable from bending and breaking if I just leave it under the mount.

[brave pecan]

Awesome! Glad to hear! So I covered the antenna wire with an adhesive heatshrink tubing hoping it would be more weather resistant and was able to curve it a bit more aggressively to fit in the channel. Thought about making the whole thing thicker or putting a bottom layer to make it a hole vs channel. Interested in your thoughts on improving it further

[next needle]

I am by no means great at drawing, but thinking maybe we can design a "stand" for it. Like a monitor stand for the mount. I hope i can convey my idea through this drawing and picture of a stand I was thinking of.

😜

you can easily take it out of stand and put it back in

[brave pecan]

Oh interesting! I can attempt that! Full disclosure im by no means good at 3D design! Haha but I am learning

[next needle]

I just started today, i came up with this so far in tinkercad, can't wrap my head around how to do the things i want t. Learning.

or there could be another idea much better than what i am thinking

[tired rain]

Looks promising

[brave pecan]

That looks good to me!

[next needle]

my first concept, design and print. Not the best looking or highest quality design, but does what I wanted it to do.

walls are a bit thin, but it’ll do.

[oak obsidian]

Could the groove underneath be supplemented with small hooks so the wire can be held in place without external fixture.

[olive citrus]

Yes!

Like uh

Sorta like that

Wifi channel in a Thinkpad part

[next needle]

I was too thinking something similar

[brave pecan]

Is the channel big enough you can fit the U.FL connector through there and I could enclose it completely? I’m thinking to make the whole thing like 3-4mm taller so it handles the curve off the N base well and enclose the channel

Or make a bottom cover that slides on/clips on but that’s beyond my current abilities

[olive citrus]

you could make it bigger and then squirt in some glue

a bottom cover would catch water

[olive citrus]

My node is going strong after over a month

@peak goblet did you figure it out?

[peak goblet]

Haha no how did you even remember I was working on this?? It's definitely on my to-do list. Someone from a local maker space offered to help me out, he did the same thing. We're just trying to coordinate timing

[tired rain]

@olive citrus nice. Yeah my mountain node has been up since January and still cranking. It's been so long I need to go upgrade the firmware

[olive citrus]

Huh, that's really weird. I replaced the original wires with cat5e stranded Ethernet wire, so maybe that has helped? The original wires were extremely thin and single stranded.

[olive citrus]

Are you near me? I could go up and do it.

I go north on weekends.

[tired rain]

No, I'm in Hawaii

[olive citrus]

Is Nihoa still part of Hawaii?

[tired rain]

define part of ? its uninhabitated.

[quaint ore]

Dunno if some of you might be interested in this, but if you're making a case anyway... I grabbed one of these for a nrf52 sensor project. Haven't actually built it yet, but i'm impressed that it keeps the rak going with no battery during the day, especially for the price
https://www.amazon.com/Solar-Panel-Power-USB-Charger/dp/B0CT92RNVZ/

[olive citrus]

Add a battery and it'll go all night as well!

If you get a USB power bank that can provide power while also being charged, you're golden!

[quaint ore]

got a 14500 for it 😉

probably overkill for a sensor, but it should hopefully work for a cloudy week too

[olive citrus]

I want to make an update, my battery is still going strong and shows no signs of discharge or degradation

The internal temps get hot but not hot enough to hurt the lithium manganese battery

[open coral]

Nice

[tired rain]

@olive citrusdo you have temperature sensing inside the enclosure?

[olive citrus]

Yes, pressed up next to the battery

That's the point of it, the barometric pressure is just a bonus

[tired rain]

graph it up

[olive citrus]

I do not know if it's charging the battery

I guess I'll see tonight

I just updated the SPAN device to 2.5.2

It is getting up to 31° c in the enclosure

It's getting down to only 15

It's a cloudy day today, and it seems like it is doing stuff

[olive citrus]

The sun has just gone down and the battery is back at 54%

Seems like it's charging correctly!

The real charge is at around 80%

[honest basalt]

I don't know if it actually makes a difference or not, but lately I've been hitting mine with some white flex seal.
I figure it'll help with any potential waterproofing issues from quality control. And maybe it'll help with temperatures.

I just finished this one so I need to clean it up a bit.

I use the hole where the LED cables originally were to get an external antenna plugged in.

This node is going to be a permanent install that I'll probably never get physical access to again, otherwise I'd have added a USB cable so I could update and recover without needing to break open the seal.

(Also, a big magnet on the back with some epoxy works really well for securing these.)

I accidentally got flex seal all over then antenna on those one, and I didn't think of it until it was too late. Hopefully that's not a major issue.

[warm comet]

blocking of the solar panel elements will severly cripple its output

even a small shadow can basically stop a panel from outputting any power at all

you can use painters/masking tape to tape over the panel, apply sealant, wait alittle bit for the sealant to set up just enough so it wont run, and then remove the tape leaving a nice clean edge

[honest basalt]

I'll clean that up for sure. This flex seal comes off easily enough. I usually have painters tape over it, but it somehow snuck through when I was letting it dry overnight.

[tired rain]

Wow, cool magnet trick. Last night we did a swap of the wind meter node. Here are the results of 1 month in salty windy environment. No extra sealing on the enclosure and nothing got in whatsoever ! The main damage was corrosion on the sma end of the antenna connector. I'm pretty sure the antenna got salty moisty inside which interuppted the ground connection and caused for degraded rf performance at the end of the month.

@primal harness will want to see this.

Also the screw in mount started to back its way out probably because of the constant wind gusts buffeting the solar panel and moving up and down.

and got some weird insect eggs looking thing on the edge.

[primal harness]

Ooof

Looks like the bulkhead took the brunt of it

[tired rain]

that antenna is toast now. VNA showing flat line

even after cleaning.

[primal harness]

Weird. I had one that I pulled off of a tower up for 1.5-2 years and it was completely uncorroded

It makes me wonder if there was some galvanic corrosion happening due to the composition of the SMA bulkhead's material reacting with the antennas SMA threads

[tired rain]

This was in the most marine environment you can imagine though.

only thing worse would be on a boat

[rain ferry]

what. in. the. bug

[tired rain]

Left it in my warm garage.. Well see what hatches in a few days maybe.

[quaint steppe]

they been on mine for a while now, no corrosion so i think there good enough to add to the project page

recently dropped of while cleaning the roof and Bluetooth antenna with too much strain on it ripped of the connector >.<

[tired rain]

did you refine the design for better fitment like you wanted or is v6 still latest update ?

[quaint steppe]

i would just go as is and tweak it further if people run into trouble

i didn't make any additional adjustments

so that v6 is still up to date

[tired rain]

@quaint steppe that being said I had a stock one up in windy rainy marine conditions for a month with so intrusion whatsoever.

[olive citrus]

Mine has had water intrusion but the signal has not changed at all

It's still a fine antenna

Apparently it's a good listening antenna, but can't transmit well.

[versed grove]

What's the output power of this solar panel? The specs on the lowes page aren't really clear to me

[tired rain]

@olive citruswhich antenna are you using ?

@versed groveI have no idea but it's actually overkill when using the rak4631 and the stock 1500mah battery sooooo.

[olive citrus]

The gray one is some random Chinese antenna that I got off eBay from someone who bought them in bulk. It's tuned to almost exactly 915mhz!

The white one is a discontinued wide band antenna that oicks up signals quite well but cannot send signals well. It's a 3dbi antenna or something

4dbi actually

https://a.co/d/b5kiham

Do not buy this, it's not actually a 915mhz antenns

https://www.ebay.com/itm/304157539322

This one is good ↑

[olive citrus]

I think it's 2w

The driver chip inside limits the charge speed

4.2v at 600ma

2.4 watts maximum charge speed theoretically

[honest basalt]

Somehow this node is still going. I went to grab it for firmware updates and it looks like a small tree branch fell over it at some point.

[exotic island]

Dang

[tired rain]

yeah, tough little fella.

[olive citrus]

I think they're overengineered

Which is a good thing

[olive citrus]

You should try doing the Bluetooth update method

I can do an update from almost 100ft away

Android phone with LineageOS

[honest basalt]

I normally do, but I was going to rebuild this one.

Also if it fails for whatever reason it gets stuck in bootloader mode. It's happened to me a number of times. And some of my nodes are unreachable now, so if they go out of date then that's it for them. I either risk updating and losing it for good, or running outdated firmware.

Maybe I'll buy a nice big yagi antenna for firmware upgrades.

[exotic island]

Can you update over BLE on android??

That would be so usefull @olive citrus

Can you update over lora yet?

[olive citrus]

Yeah it's been a feature on rak boards for quite a while

[olive citrus]

This will NEVER be a feature due to the amount of data that needs to be transmitted

[open coral]

Prob will never happen

[olive citrus]

I turn off battery saver, I make sure the app has unrestricted battery, and then I start the firmware update with the phone in a static position. I also installed an app called "Caffiene" to keep the screen on. I've had 0 issues. The updtae takes about 5 minutes at 3.5kb/s

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=moe.zhs.caffeine

I also make sure that the meshtastic app is not connected to the device

[exotic island]

Can you do it for a heltec?

[olive citrus]

No

[exotic island]

Only for the RAK, Okay

[olive citrus]

It's specifically a feature in the rak bootloader

[exotic island]

Oh, Yeah cool

[olive citrus]

Heltecs drain too much power to be used in lawn lights anyway

The solar panel can't outpace the battery drain

Also if you get a brownout, the chip will go into ultra power saver mode for 365 days

Usually takes 4-5 days to get to this point

I found a power saving feature btw

Make sure to turn OFF the status LED in these lawn lights!

[exotic island]

Yeah, Cool

[olive citrus]

Doing this decreased my power usage by 1%/day

Btw, has anyone seen my span?

It's up there

[honest basalt]

If mine ever gets critically low I shut off TX.
Saves a lot of battery. And it's still receiving so I can turn it back on remotely.

[olive citrus]

Mine has never dropped below 30%, and that's AFTER I nerfed the battery with schottky diodes for Longevity and winter heating power

It probably will this winter tho

[rain ferry]

Is there a way to program that in, or you mean if u happen to notice it u can do it manually?

[olive citrus]

They're doing it manually, probably with remote administration

Idk how they turn it back on unless they're using the cli

I have a chip that cuts off voltage to my rak entirely if it gets below a certain voltage so brownouts cannot occur. It waits until the voltage is high enough to turn it back on

I keep my cells between about 3 and 4 volts with those schottky diodes modifying the voltage

[honest basalt]

Manually unfortunately.
I should probably write a small script to do it though, in case I forget to check and it's overcast for a couple weeks.

[barren forge]

Can you share more about your setup here?

[olive citrus]

If you scroll up, I've posted everything

I modded the board to make the chip think it's always nighttime, I removed the resistors that limit power drain and replaced them with solid chunks of metal, and then I attached the esp32 to where the LED used to go.

This lets me use the button to turn off the node to replace the antenna

Or for storage

On the positive terminal of the battery I put 2 schottky diodes. This is both to create a little bit of heat (diodes get hot when power goes through) and to drop the voltage of the power going into and out of the battery

It's about 10-20% of the voltage depending on temperature.

This may seem counterintuitive until you look at the chip datasheet. The chip has a voltage cutoff of 2.5v. I made it go up to 2.7-2.9v

Batteries lose the most amount of total capacity in the last 20% of charging and discharging, so by cutting the battery capacity in half, it won't ever get to the point where the battery gets damaged!

Another side effect that I've found: the solar panel is ALWAYS supplying power. The diodes are always producing heat as they burn the extra electricity. We'll see what happens this winter!

I've got a thermometer chip in there on the battery

[tired rain]

@olive citrus my hunch is they won't be producing enough heat to make a difference but I'm curious to see the results

[olive citrus]

I can see it from my home now thanks to a guy on a mountain with really tall antennas

Unfortunately, the diodes are in the air instead of directly touching the battery.

I did make a completely sealed enclosure though.

The battery makes heat when it charges, and the sun shines directly on the black case and solar panels, and now there is a little oven heat/windshield thing that I'm worried might make it too hot.

[brave pecan]

I sorta captured all the mods here in my post https://www.printables.com/model/958722-meshtastic-harbor-breeze-solar-panel-n-type-antenn/comments/2118466

[olive citrus]

I would have liked credit for my image, though you can use it. It's a good post.

I'm the only one who used orange and blue ethernet cable 😉

Though I highly recommend upgrading all the wires since the stuff in there is super weak and thin

[honest basalt]

My local Lowe's seems to be phasing these out for the more expensive RGB version.
There's still a few left, but every time I check there are less and less.

I also tried to find this on AliExpress and an RGB one is all I could find.

[brave pecan]

Happy to add credit! I didn’t want to tag peoples discord handle on the public web, but let me know what youd like and I’ll update the image

[olive citrus]

Oh I understand! I don't mind the tag

[exotic island]

Hey guys, I’m interested in picking a few of these up. I’ve built bigger solar nodes but I need them water resistant from the rain. Anyone had experience with that?

[tired rain]

@exotic islandyes. I've had one deployed since january at 8000ft on Maui and it's still going. I also had a weather station unit deployed for a month in an extreme marine environment with no water intrusion whatsoever.

#1198011215025283124 message

[exotic island]

So it’s water resistant enough? @tired rain

[tired rain]

All of mine have been very good at keeping water out. A few have had bad seal around the button but that can be reseated or glued over.

[exotic island]

Cool

[brave pecan]

Ok adding credit and want to be accurate! @olive citrus is this ok to tag you? Let me know who/what lines were contributed as I think there might be a couple of people here

[olive citrus]

Woah what

No just do like @olive citrus or something

Why are you posting my Mal profile 🤣

Thanks to {list of names} is all ya need imo

The world doesn't need to know that I'm a weeb

[brave pecan]

Haha 🤷‍♂️ it’s what you have in your discord about me

Also! Took the opportunity to re-mod my setup today… reattached the button I airgapped off the board and implemented the always on mod. Working great!

Updated!

[tired rain]

Strange bird on that pole

[brave pecan]

Beautiful photo tho!

[olive citrus]

Heya, I have a photo of the diodes

@brave pecan

That goes right on the battery terminal and then the wire cinnects to the end

I shrinktubed mine and taped it to the battery for thermal (keep battery warm in winter) reasons

The specific battery that comes with these panels sho be able to withstand the extra heat in summer

The trade-off for less battery degradation is it halves the % of the battery

So it has 50% capacity and will last like 50 years

It might also act as a surge protection, since the device will always be charging when the sun is out, no matter what.

[brave pecan]

Oh yea! I’ll add that. Mine are in a barely visible heatshrink at the + battery terminal

[olive citrus]

Keep in mind, adding it could mean 1/2 the battery capacity

Not exactly half, but just keep it in mind. Your device will never report above 60% unless charging

It's a really dark and cloudy day today, but my node is reporting 100%, which means the panel is charging

[proud silo]

Hi All! I actually built this recently and made a video about range testing utilizing it -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQws7cLrRo4

[tired rain]

@proud siloI would appreciate a link in the description to my original hackaday article https://hackaday.io/project/194509-harbor-breeze-meshtastic-hack

[proud silo]

Sure thing! I put the link in the written guide on instructables but not in the YT description yet -- I'll add it 🙂

[tired rain]

cool thanks.

The instructable article is still being approved so I couldn't see the article.

[proud silo]

Argh. Roger that -- hope they approve it soon

[tired rain]

@proud silodid you just luck out with that backwards battery polarity cable ? That might throw off a few viewers.

[proud silo]

Yeah I got unlucky from a random amazon hit lol

[tired rain]

the ones I got from amazon are reversed too.

[serene goblet]

I talked my wife into getting 4 of the 0.8w solar panel ones from Lowes..

[brave pecan]

Cool video!

[olive citrus]

It went down to -4c; the diode is working!

Probably got colder on the pole

[neon fjord]

I'm planning on building one of these this weekend. My current roof node runs off USB power. If I were to run that USB cable to this setup, would it charge the battery as well?

(Logic being: primary, secondary, and tertiary power. USB/Solar/Battery. Also I already ran the USB cable up there so it might as well have a job 😅)

[random badge]

I haven't done the full build some of the others here have (I just soldered the battery plug directly to the tabs on the battery holder in the Lowe's solar light), but it did charge my battery when plugged in via USB

[neon fjord]

I was planning just the plain vanilla version like that, so that's good to hear

[tired rain]

@neon fjordyou really don't need the USB for backup. My mountain node has been going for 11 months on battery/solar and has never dipped below 4.1 volts.

[neon fjord]

(it's entirely because I already ran the USB up there and it was a pain to re-splice the wire 😅)

[tired rain]

Then you could just put an esp32 node in the box and have wifi network access to it also.

[neon fjord]

That's actually the current setup. Heltec v3 in a Gatorade powder container just to see if I can hit where I want to hit lol

[tired rain]

But yeah, the usb will keep the battery so charged up the solar circuit will probably never activate.

[neon fjord]

I'm a big fan of redundancy so, this brings me joy. Especially since I have overheard power lines + Missouri sooooo

[tired rain]

the orange color actually looks pretty dope.

[neon fjord]

It really does. That's the only thing I'll miss about it

It's dummy corded since the bracket is printed in PLA. It was always intended to be a proof of concept before I spent a whole $35 on a wisblock lol

[serene goblet]

Welp 3 .6w and 3 .8w Lowes LED lights are coming..

Gonna try to convert 2 of them to projects. 1 node and 1 wled, hopefully..

[random badge]

I'm working on building out 7 of these for a repeater network. Still doing range tests and figuring out where to position them, but I'm hoping to have them in position by spring.

[tired rain]

Oh awesome. Do you know what you'll be mounting to ? @random badge

[random badge]

Depends on the location. I'm putting one on my house which will be mounted to an N-type antenna via the 3D printed bracket linked above somewhere. All the others will be a mixture of railing mounts, pipe mounts, and just sitting on a windowsill.

The one on my house will be probably 35-40 feet off the ground, since it'll be 10-15 feet above my roofline. For the others, I'll just be putting them as high as I reasonably can.

[serene goblet]

My lights get here Sunday hopefully..

[tired rain]

@random badgei've got a screw-in mount you might be interested in.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/71b55f121e75b59cc458d217/w/c2d729584feb5fcfa626886f/e/fd68181190950d769c16a475?renderMode=0&uiState=6737e4b73aa6ae3c977ac12a

[random badge]

Thank you! I'll take a look!

[neon fjord]

Print for my TV antenna mast mount ended after it got dark so gotta wait until tomorrow. Gotta snag some hose clamps from the hardware store too

(ignore the hole I had to seal on the top, I definitely did not initially put the antenna in the wrong spot leading it to not be able to close)

If it works I'll put it on makerworld or thingiverse or whatever

[tired rain]

@neon fjordlooks nice. make sure you secure than antenna or the wind WILL blow is down. I am leaning towards sma direct attached to the case wall as opposed to running pigtail out of the case as the more metal that is outside of the case the more rust and corrosion will happen.

[neon fjord]

Oh good point! Any suggestions for securing the antenna? Long term I wanna switch to one of those fancy detached antennas, though

[tired rain]

@neon fjordI would just use a bunch of goop / shoe goo glue to secure the 90 angle and there the sma threads are exposed. That glue is tough but also removable if pulled hard enough.

[neon fjord]

Makes sense, thanks!

[tired rain]

@neon fjorddid you check the power button seal too ? The button is sometimes installed with a little fold in the gaskety party, can lead to leaks.

[neon fjord]

I did, fortunately got a good one on this one!

[tired rain]

good to go !

[serene goblet]

Sunday, I get mine.. Can't wait.. To bad I can't work on them till next month..

I need to figure out best way to set angle on them when mounting now..

[tired rain]

@serene gobletangle of the solar panel ?

[serene goblet]

https://sunsolartilt.com/pages/calculator

[tired rain]

Don't even worry about it. Even vertically oriented should be enough

[neon fjord]

That's good, I was planning on just yoloing it lmao

[serene goblet]

I'm sure of that, but I still like to be efficient.. 😛

[tired rain]

This node was at 8000ft for 10 months. So dry up there not a bit of corrosion either. Testing battery capacity now.

No visible uv damage either.

[open coral]

What’s the green board ?

[neon fjord]

The bracket I whipped together worked, if anyone wants it: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6834824

[tired rain]

@open coralgreen board is the charge controller board that comes with the solar light.

@neon fjordI'd be worried the wind would blow the whole thing down pivioting on the mounting screw. To be safe I'd design is a stop so that it's not possible to rotate very far on that pivot point.

[neon fjord]

Hmmm, that's fair. It's pretty tight currently, but that's right now. I can definitely see it getting some wiggle over time

[serene goblet]

You could always try to put in notches that interlock to help it in place while tightening a screw..

[neon fjord]

Would decreasing the size a bit and adding an o-ring/gasket make sense?

[tired rain]

I think so. That long arm may begin to bend in the constant sun

[neon fjord]

It is PETG so that should help a bit. But yeah, definitely want to revise the design. At least my garage roof is easy to get on haha

[neon fjord]

One day I'm gonna get a CNC machine and can make stuff out of metal too

[serene goblet]

WOOHOO! Got my lights today. Just to make sure, where am I wiring up the RAK190007 from and to ? I think I saw from battery direcctly, but not sure if I'm going to battery or solar ports on the RAK..

Or is there a page I can walk through ?

[tired rain]

@serene goblet go from battery directly to battery port on rak. And check the polarity twice

[serene goblet]

OK, I think I have JST 2.0 connectors..

[tired rain]

most of the jst2.0 connectors are wired in reverse. can swap them pretty easily but need to know when to do it.

I just solder to the tabs like this

My mountain node I took down recently had a 2600mAh lion cell in it. I tested its capacity after 10 months up there and and it's still got at least 90% capacity. This had no diode voltage protection using the solar charge board circuit.

[serene goblet]

Oh yea, I'm aware of polarity.. LOL That looks like the same battery I have.. I can't find my JST2.0 kit, so i'll order one..

[tired rain]

although I've smoked one of those raks twice and it still works.

[serene goblet]

I smoked one of my t-decks w/ reverse battery polarity.. Plugged it into USB, and charging IC started glowing red and smoking..

[serene goblet]

If I'm not going to use the light, can I desolder the wires and pull them out ?

And should I add a BMS to the battery to be safe ?

I have some already for my other 18650s..

[tired rain]

yeah just rip out the led light wires. You don't need a BMS unless you your doing multiple cells. The solar charge circuit already handles battery charging.

[serene goblet]

So it has discharge protection also ?

[tired rain]

no, but the rak uses so little you'll never run out even with clouds.

[serene goblet]

Hmm, ok

Doesn't matter if the power switch is on or off, correct ?

[tired rain]

not unless you wire it in to use the switch. the switch is only used for the light.

Last two months, never went below 4.13

[serene goblet]

Cool, I wired it right to battery

[serene goblet]

What area are you in ? Weather wise.

[tired rain]

I'm in hawaii.

This was at 8000ft though. lots of clouds most of the day, clear afternoons.

[serene goblet]

Big island ?

I've only been 1 time, and hit 4 islands. Place is beautiful..

That's some good info..

I found a jst2.0 from one of.my test solar setups, so was able to get everything ready minus an antenna mount.

[serene goblet]

What are you use for an antenna ? And are you doing remote management/admin on that node ?

[tired rain]

I was using the 8dbi rokland fiberglass antenna. I did have remote admin setup and could do from about 5-6 miles out.

[serene goblet]

Nice! The tram, where I'd like to put one out here is 8400-8600 ft..

But I think I'm further than 6 miles away..

Do you happen to have a photo of the install ? Or is this still needed ?

[tired rain]

I have lots of photos. What part would you like to see ?

Oh, the install itself. yes, hold on.

bamboo pole in a tree

[serene goblet]

I was referring to the diode for the photo.

[tired rain]

almost swapped it out with this but it wasn't working so pull it down.

oh yeah sure.

do you mean the dual diode or the single ?

[serene goblet]

Is that the rak solar box ?

[serene goblet]

No clue, which do I need to install, and what diode(s) do I need to get ?

[tired rain]

yeah.

[serene goblet]

I kinda want one, but saw its 109 for the start kit one..

[tired rain]

Any schottkey diode should be fine. You absolutely don't need it though. The top red wire is going to the led charge board.

The Rak box is totally overkill when the solar light handles everything I've thrown at it.

[serene goblet]

What have you put in them ?

And do you recommend a service/drip loop when mounting ?

And any recommendations for mounting the rak board ? I can 3d print a mount, and screw the rak to it..

[tired rain]

I have a weather station node at the coast. It survived 30 days in 30mph wind + salt + rain with zero water intrusion. The mountain node was at 8000ft for 10 months with no intrusion, zero battery issues.

I usually use a drip loop for the sma pigtail just for the hell of it.

I just wedge the board under the solar board and tak it down with a dab of goop / shoe goo.

dab of glue at the red circle.

[serene goblet]

Oh, looks like it can be screwed in with the solar board..

[tired rain]

i don't think the screw holes line up though.

[olive citrus]

Oh right you did the weird thing where you cut the trace

[tired rain]

If your sma pigtail is too short for that location you can wedge it up at the top like this :

[olive citrus]

I think that the way I did mine is better for longer-term functionality

[serene goblet]

I have 6" pigtails

[serene goblet]

Cut what trace ?

I didn't cut a trace, or add a diode..

[tired rain]

ok, that might work too.

[olive citrus]

Someone here, I don't remember who, cut a trace to get both button functionality AND schottky battery protection

[serene goblet]

Oh! To be able to use switch to turn it off/on ?

[olive citrus]

I did the double schottky diode and soldered the board to the LED spot, and removed the light sensor resistor to make it think it's always night

But mine is gonna be up on the pole forever now that it's up there

If I have to take it down, I can press the button to cut the voltage and remove the antenna wire.

[serene goblet]

Yea, that the plan for mine also..

[olive citrus]

I posted my setup a while ago, but @tired rain has a good setup too

[serene goblet]

That's kind of a good idea. But I'm not sure what the schottky diode is suppose to do.

[serene goblet]

I've scrolled from top to bottom of this thread a few times looking at all the photos. I believe I saw yours..

[olive citrus]

I did a double schottky diode inline with the battery terminal to trigger the battery protection circuit earlier.

[serene goblet]

Oh! It's for battery discharge protection ?

[olive citrus]

Yeah the board has it already, but it's at 2.5v

[serene goblet]

Yea, I am worried about that, but being in the desert, we tend to get a lot of sun.

[olive citrus]

So if we drop the voltage coming out of the battery by like. 2v

[serene goblet]

Oh, that's not really good for the rak, is it ?

[olive citrus]

And also the chip does overvoltage protection, so the diode will prevent the battery from going over ~80%

[serene goblet]

So you removed the positive wire from the battery to solar board and acted the diodes there ?

[olive citrus]

It's fine for the rak, I'm worried About the battery and I want the voltage cutoff circuit to cut off at around 2.9v

I believe I have a pic here

[serene goblet]

What diodes did you use ?

The one of the penny ?

[olive citrus]

Yeah those

You see how they're pointed at eachother

Like a ying yang

[serene goblet]

Oh, no, I didn't notice that..

Oh, ok. I know what you mean.

[olive citrus]

There is a downside to doing it my way.

[serene goblet]

?

[olive citrus]

The battery capacity is basically cut in half in exchange for battery durability

[serene goblet]

I get that.

[tired rain]

I just tested the cell up for 10 months without any diodes and the capacity is still up at > 95%

[olive citrus]

If you're not really worried about the battery, do it Tavis's way

I don't want to take my node down for 20-30 years

[serene goblet]

I have replacement 18650s..

But getting to the node might be the issue,

[olive citrus]

There is a pin you can lift on that chip to make it work for lifepo4 batteries

I posted the datasheet for it a while ago

[olive citrus]

I just comprehended this... Maybe don't go for the diodes at all. Diodes create heat. Extra heat may not be good.

The batteries that come with the light won't have any thermal runaway unless they get to be like 200°C

They should have a protection circuit built into them as well.

[serene goblet]

It can get 120f in the shade here

[olive citrus]

200°c is 392°F

If the batteries start on fire, you have bigger problems

The plastic will have melted away by then

[serene goblet]

That I know! LOL

[olive citrus]

The reason I did schottky diodes is because we don't get a lot of sun in the winter, and it gets cold (diode make heat?), and it gets just as hot in the summer.

And bringing the pole down is a huge pain

I can update wirelessly from the ground just fine.

[serene goblet]

See, I need to figure that out also..

[olive citrus]

What you could do, is modify 2 of them, one one way and one the other way, and test them for a year

Put the winner on the pole

Put the loser on a chicken coop

[serene goblet]

So, removed 3 resistors, need to jumper the 2 closes, correct ?

[loud ferry]

so the schottky diodes are making heat, meaning they're consuming power too...so not only is it reducing the maximum capacity (in exchange for increased longevity) but it goes through that reduced capacity faster...right?

[serene goblet]

Ok, so minus the pigtail connector, using the internal antenna now, I'm all set.

First solar node down

I'm crashing out. Have a good one..

[olive citrus]

Huh, I didn't think about that... However, it's not a lot of power from my experience.

800mah lasts about 48 hours

And that's with an i2c temperature/barometer sensor.

It's good to keep the battery warmer in the winter when cold temperatures can hurt the battery life

In the summer, the temperature increase isn't meaningful

[loud ferry]

yeah I was just thinking, it gets very cold up here, so I was even thinking of using some Styrofoam to insulate and avoid damaging the cells

with the diodes, that might be even more effective

[serene goblet]

Yea, the tram node will def need a way to insulate itself..

forgot to update rak, so had to come back..

Now to just figure out how to do it ota.. LOL

[olive citrus]

It is very easy if you have Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nordicsemi.android.mcp

Make sure meshtastic is disconnected and closed, connect to the node with this, and then upload the OTA. Takes about 5 minutes to flash the file. I do it monthly about 35 feet away

I could probably go further but I'm not gonna risk that

[serene goblet]

What size drill bit is needed for antenna hole ?

[neon fjord]

iirc i used a 7/32' bit and then hit the hole with a deburring tool

I can't remember exactly because I started too small and woked up bit by bit lol

[serene goblet]

Ah, I have bits, but no devouring tool..

[neon fjord]

I'm not even sure I even actually needed it, but I like to make the edges pretty

[serene goblet]

yea, I get it.

Maybe I'll use some blue painters tape to help..

[serene goblet]

I measured 6mm for the SMA connector.

[serene goblet]

Ok, last question about the solar mod.. Should I use a normal SMA, or a 90 SMA ?

[tired rain]

@serene goblet unless your antenna already has a 90 in it you might want the 90 sma. Figure out your mounting angle to decide as well

[serene goblet]

This is the antenna I have right now. I plan to upgrade to a fiberglass one. Hope to be able to pole mount the ant on the side of my roof..

https://a.co/d/doyX2UX

I also have 90 SMA to ipex...

https://a.co/d/doj5z9W

[tired rain]

@serene gobletoh those 90 deg sma. Yes those will allow you to place the sma hole in places with less clearance.

but aren't required.

the only issue I saw with the antenna sma hole in the base was that the wind would eventually blow the antenna out of it's vertical position. I'm thinking some goop glue to seal and hold in place is the easiest solution for that.

[tired rain]

The alternative is to have the sma plug outside of the base in a mount position but that allows for more corrosion posibility.

[serene goblet]

Awesome. Yea I read in here about the 90 antennas and how the tend to move in wind.. It can get really windy were I live also.. Thats why I plan to upgrade to a fiberglass as soon as I can..

[exotic island]

What board are people manly running in these solar stakes?

[random badge]

I'm using the WisBlock

[neon fjord]

I have another wisblock coming in tomorrow so I can convert the node at my mom's house lol

[serene goblet]

wis here also. Just finished mine up. Added SMA for external antenna..

I printed a mount plate for the rak19007, and used 3M double sided tape to mount the plate in the panel.

[serene goblet]

@tired rain I ended up 3D Printing a simple mount plate for the 19007,, and 3M taped it to the enclosure for the panel. That way, if worse case the board craps the bed, I can swap it still w/o having to deal w/ the 3M tape on the board itself..

[serene goblet]

I'm trying to figure out a way to 3D Print a clip to hold the antenna at 90..

[serene goblet]

Found one

https://www.printables.com/model/790124-wifi-antenna-right-angle-support-clip/

[tired rain]

@serene goblet that will with for the bendy part of the antenna, now just got screw it in tight enough that it doesn't unscrew rotate. That's why I just use shoe goo.

[serene goblet]

I plan to zip tight it on, and it's already so tight, I can barely unscrew it..

[neon fjord]

Have another one almost built and ready and then realized I'm out of JST-PH connectors 😭

[serene goblet]

What about this ? I just found this on AliExpress:
$40.06 | D4 5V 6V Solar Battery Charger For Security camera Portable Solar Power Bank With DC 5521 Output 4W Solar Panel Battery Charger
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mquH34r

[tired rain]

rak might just fit in there

[serene goblet]

I found it as low as 15 USD, I might buy it..

[loud ferry]

lmao ali must have all of us somehow lumped into one group because I haven't even been searching for solar enclosures and yet this exact one ends up in my inbox

[serene goblet]

LOL

I ordered it.. Will report back when it comes.

[serene goblet]

Panel comes tomorrow..

[ebon pebble]

Well the lights at harbor freight are different for the worse now. Now not sealed, 1400mAh 18500 cell, and a smaller friction fit swivel post, so the 3d printed mount doesn't fit anymore. 😐

[serene goblet]

How much are those lights ?

[ebon pebble]

I think it was like $7 or something silly cheap. I didn't have the original write-up with me when I was perusing HF so I just saw something that seemed like it looked like the right light, and considering there weren't any other similar options, I went for it.

[serene goblet]

I have a similar panel coming tomorrow..

[ebon pebble]

very curious to hear results of this if any of yall try it.

[exotic island]

Yeah let us know

[tired rain]

it's not me who's getting that similar enclosure its WillE

[serene goblet]

It will be here tomorrow!

[exotic island]

Let me know!!

[serene goblet]

Dang it. No panel today.. Just looked at tracking and it barely made it to the US yesterday.... 😦

[ebon pebble]

I feel for you. It's like missing Christmas.

Really looking forward to the review. Seems like it could be an excellent fit, for relatively cheap.

[serene goblet]

Yea

[ebon pebble]

Any luck yet @serene goblet ?
I just found a hilltop stand of trees where I'm going to put up a solar node. Planning begins now, but that little enclosure could be a great start if it works!

[serene goblet]

I haven't been able to get the hardware for it yet. I was told to get thermal cutoff fuses for it also..

So waiting for the slow boat to get here..

[ebon pebble]

Ah lame. I was hoping it had arrived in the US by now.

[serene goblet]

The panel is here, but not the thermal fuses

I got 50c 10 of them for like 2 bux from Ali..

Or I can get 5 for 8.99 from Amazon..

My plan is to rewire everything to go through a INA3221 for monitoring, and have a RAK19003 in it..

I'll be powering it from either the wired power output, or make a cable for the 2 pin JST on the charge board to the RAK.

With holidays right now, it's a little hard to spend extra money..

[ebon pebble]

Yup, I feel that

[serene goblet]

I have returns that need to go back, so maybe next week I can get one.

[quaint steppe]

With the new android update i can see that mine doesn't seem to be waterproof anymore 😅

[tired rain]

Oh wow, what an indicator !

[olive citrus]

Hasn't hit 25% yet and it's below freezing out

The wind guard is working!

[tired rain]

the wind guard keeps the wind off and keeps it from freezing ?

[serene goblet]

I got my 19003 yesterday, so this weekend I'll hopefully get that setup completed..

[random badge]

Has anyone tried adding a waterproof USB plug to the casing to make updating easier?

I was playing with the idea this morning. Most of the waterproof extender products I'm finding online are far too big for the case, but it seems like it should be possible.

[tired rain]

@random badge I didn't think it's worth it when only 4 screws hold the case together. Unless you're doing extra sealing around the whole thing. But then again how will you push the reset button if you need to?

[open coral]

https://us.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-bot

[random badge]

Good point!

[tired rain]

@open coral wtf?

[open coral]

It works lol. Put it in as a joke

[tired rain]

Oh ok.... Didn't land

[loud ferry]

dw @open coral I laughed

https://tenor.com/view/sensible-chuckle-gif-11098163

[exotic island]

@serene goblet how did that panel work out with the 18650 cells?

[serene goblet]

Waiting for additional parts still.

[exotic island]

So it was just like a solar panel and 18650 cells in it right? @serene goblet

[serene goblet]

No cells

Waiting for some connectors so I can install the INA3221..

[exotic island]

Ahh

[serene goblet]

I got the lowes light almost finished w/ INA3221. Just need to crimp the wires

[serene goblet]

All setup.. debating a BME680 now also.. would be fairly easy to add..

When ch2, which is battery shows negative, does that mean battery is charging ?

[tired rain]

@serene gobletyes, negative current usually means charging

[red pike]

I've considered it but haven't tried it yet. I seal mine up well and have had to open 2 due to failed ota flashes. I mentioned the problem in another room and someone suggested using a reed switch. That would work if using the reset button would cause it to drop out of DFU mode, but it doesn't (at least when DFU mode is entered via OTA flashing).

I don't think I really need access to the reset button since you can send a command to enter DFU mode via the web flasher or adafruit-nrfutil.

Maybe something like this would work? Kinda bulky still.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804440339698.html

Or find a low profile USB-C socket that seems like it might fit and solder a butchered USB-C cable to it?
https://www.aliexpress.us/w/wholesale-usb%2525252dc-socket.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.search.0

[olive citrus]

Doesn't keep it from freezing, but it keeps the wind from blowing the thing off the ledge!

[serene goblet]

So I'm going to flip ch2, but looking good testing charging, and ina..

Kinda think I need to flip ch3 also...

[ebon pebble]

have you posted a picture of the enclosure all setup yet? was curious what you decided to do for antenna mounting and what the rak looks like inside.

[serene goblet]

I may have posted some somewhere.. LOL I used a bender antenna, a 3D printed 90 angle clip, and a rak19007 mount with 3M double-sided tape holding it in place.

The INA is still loose, haven't decided if I want to fumble out a 3D mount for it, or just leave it loose.. I want it to be serviceable as much as possible.. Ultimately I would like to be able to mount it on a pole, with an external fiber glass antenna..

That's the antenna setup I went with for initial testing, and POC..

[ebon pebble]

ahh, this isn't the new "security cam charger" panel with 4 cell holders in it. my bad.

[serene goblet]

I have that one also, waiting for parts to be able to install INA3221 in it also.

[olive citrus]

Tonight is the first time that my node will dip below 30% charge

Already at 28%

It was foggy and wet all day

The panel was outputting 4.08v

The battery currently reads at 3.51 volts.

I also updated the node today.

If the power drops below 10%, I'm going to disable the environment metrics module

[olive citrus]

Wow only hit 22% last night!

The sun hasn't been out for days and it's still going pretty strong!

[serene goblet]

Does this mean the battery is charged, and solar is only powering the device, battery isn't?

[tired rain]

@serene gobletThe battery is def. full charged. The solar panel voltage is at about open circuit voltage which means very little current is flowing through it. I'd say the device is running purely off the panel.

[serene goblet]

That's kinda nice to see..

Now to put it in the garage with no light and see how long it lasts..

[exotic island]

What app is this?

[serene goblet]

Meshtastic app for Android.

[exotic island]

Wow, that’s so nice

[serene goblet]

The power is from having an INA3221 and enabling telemetry module.

[olive citrus]

@tired rain @serene goblet My device shows the highest voltage that's in the system. In the daytime it shows 100%, but as soon as the sun goes down it shows the battery voltage

Battery is definitely not being charged lol

[serene goblet]

I've seen the battery get charged in the morning, this was in the afternoon, so I'm sureit was charged by then..

[olive citrus]

My battery has 2 schottky diodes in line on the + side to make the battery last longer

[serene goblet]

Ah, I don't have that.

[olive citrus]

Diodes only allow power to go 1 way so I did this, also there's a voltage cutoff in the lowes solar light charging chip that I'm hopefully triggering sooner:

[olive citrus]

Oh wow

It lasted about 4 days without any significant charging!

The last day it got charged by direct sunlight, it was December 8th

The cutoff voltage is 2.5v on the charging chip

[tired rain]

that's frickin baller

[olive citrus]

When it hits 2.5v, which IMO is too low for a battery, the battery voltage should be 2.8-2.9v

The cut-on voltage is like 2.9v I think so the voltage droop shouldn't harm the battery even if it gets super cold

It's crazy that it lost a whole 20% of charge overnight

[olive citrus]

A full day of sun charged the battery from 2.98v to 3.54v

Tomorrow should also be a full day of sun.

I switched on power saver mode just in case.

[olive citrus]

Yup, fully charged!

[brave pecan]

Looks like mine didn’t make it

[tired rain]

Odd that you actually for a zero value there

[olive citrus]

Nah

[olive citrus]

Are you using the power saving option?

Mine is in client mode

With a rak board

If you have those diodes, the charging chip might have triggered a cutoff

Those resistors get replaced by just a piece of wire or metal specifically to remove a power limit for charging the battery

Also to remove power drain limits

[olive citrus]

Did you remember to turn off the heartbeat led

It's very important to keep the bare minimum enabled on these solar nodes

[brave pecan]

OoOo Leme check

It was on! Turned it off Ty

[olive citrus]

Might get you an extra hour or two per day. Those little flashes add up!

Also... After updating, turn that heartbeat on and off. Sometimes the setting gets toggled funny during the update and instead of being toggled off it's solid on

[olive citrus]

@brave pecan any change?

[brave pecan]

It was only reporting status every 12 hours I think so I changed that, will report after more run time!

[olive citrus]

Woah, that's a LOT of runtime

It looks like the panel isn't providing a good amount of power though. What type of wires are going to the solar panel, and did you remove the current limiter

[brave pecan]

Stock wires, I did adjust the resistors as you recommended

It bounces between 20% and charging mostly

[olive citrus]

Hmmm weird

It gets full sun?

You left out the diodes right

[brave pecan]

Diodes in

Full sun

Reporting was set to 12 hrs tho. Now I’ll see more

No sun yet today!

[olive citrus]

Mine bounce between 36% and 20%

[tired rain]

@brave pecanmaybe you put the diodes in backwards ? or did you do the dual setup ?

[ebon pebble]

I saw the dual diodes and wondered why that would ever be necessary...? It's only ever going to be DC, and only ever biased one way that is desired, right? You only need one diode that allows current when the PV panel is the high potential side, and is an open whenever it's low. Why ever two diodes?

[tired rain]

Just to reduce the maximum voltage in both directions.

all about the voltage drop over the diode.

[brave pecan]

Dual - it’s performing as I’d expect

[olive citrus]

Today is going to be the very first day with snow on the panel 😱

Hopefully it melts, the Enclosure is black, there's basically a solar oven acting as a windshield, and there is a heat diode inside

[undone jewel]

How did yours do?

[brave pecan]

We’ll see what tomorrow looks like, but I don’t think we had enough snow to stick long esp at the angle my panel is

North of here did get more tho!

[olive citrus]

It's nighttime

At 1:30pm it was still getting 4.11v

At 6pm it was nighttime and the battery was at 3.49v, which is not great

Usually it's between 3.57 and 3.59v

It has been cloudy all day though, so maybe that's normal

The temperature will also have an effect on the voltage drop of the diodes

[olive citrus]

Uh oh

It's high noon and the panel voltage says 3.34v

Snow is a problem

Actually, that data is from 6am

[brave pecan]

i think mine is snow free

[olive citrus]

Mine is charging!

[olive citrus]

I don't know how far it will charge

[brave pecan]

What about 2x'ing the diodes so 2x each way and 1/2'ing the resistance there.. would that expand the battery range? I'm sure i knew this basic theory at some time

[tired rain]

It's not really about the resistance it's about the intrinsic voltage drop across the diode. But if resistance is an issue then yeah two in parallel should halve the resistance. But the voltage drop will remain the same.

[brave pecan]

so i thought that the resistance is what created the voltage drop?

im just thinking like basic v=ir or something tho

[tired rain]

No the voltage drop is just a basic property of a diode. It doesn't matter what voltage is given. If it was v=ir then the drop would be voltage dependent

[brave pecan]

Ah gotcha

That makes sense

[olive citrus]

it charged all the way up!

the cold is limiting/dropping the voltage a bit

the maximum the battery should be able to provide is 3.59v

[potent crystal]

Are there recommended solar panels or solare lights that include mppt circuitry?

[loud ferry]

most people recommend soshine brand if you're buying standalone panels for projects

[ebon pebble]

That security cam panel battery enclosure thing turn out for you @serene goblet?

[serene goblet]

Been busy w/ holidays so havent messed with that project lately..

[ebon pebble]

Hey fair enough. I hope you've had a good holiday season!

[serene goblet]

So far, wife just got a dog bite on Christmas day.. LOL Good other then that.. I've been thinking of going a different route with that solar panel also now. Might just use it to power a node with a larger antenna than it would be able to support..

[serene goblet]

Finally got a photo of my finished Lowes panel..

[serene goblet]

Solar on Ch1, Bat on Ch2, RAK on Ch3.

Ch2 shows + when charging battery, and - when drawing from battery. Ch3 shows - as its always drawing power.

[normal fulcrum]

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

[serene goblet]

So solar to VIN1+, VIN1- to solar input. Bat+ to VIN2-, VIN2+ to BAT+ input. Bat output to VIN3-, VIN3+ to device power. I.E. RAK19007 BAT+ All grounds are connected together. Does that make sense ?

[normal fulcrum]

Absolutely!

[ebon pebble]

Wiring batt to channel 1 is how the devs designed the meshtastic telemetry functionality though, I think. It always picks that as "battery" so you can readdress the battery reading to I2C 66 and the generic "environment" reading (too left value in your screenshot) will show the actual battery voltage.

[serene goblet]

Oh, I guess I'll have to rewire that then..

[ebon pebble]

I mean it's totally inconsequential unless you WANT it that way. You're still getting the data, it's just not lined up with the meshtastic devs assumptions.

[brave pecan]

So I was looking, I have 1N4007 diodes. Would a smaller voltage drop be better? I guess I’d want to know the cutoff voltage of the circuit in the solar light vs what is more ideal. Does anyone know this?

@olive citrus I think we talked about turning the led off around Dec 29 👌

[olive citrus]

Woah nice

[blissful matrix]

I connected an ina3221 to measure the voltages of the solar panels and batteries. It works fine and I have the information on my phone.
Is it possible to send these values ​​(voltage, current) by radio? Like for the BME280!

[serene goblet]

I believe so.

[tired rain]

@brave pecan.8v is a pretty big voltage drop. I would try to go as low as possible like the 0.2v ones.

[exotic island]

Anyone know how many watts the panel is for the Lowe’s harboor solar lights? Interested in making one but there is not the most sun where I live

[tired rain]

@exotic island all I know is that it's overkill here in Hawaii

[serene goblet]

I believe its only 2w

[exotic island]

Okay, Cool

[serene goblet]

Sorry, it's 0.6W

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Harbor-Breeze-60LM-Solar-Flood-Light-0-6-Watt-Black-Solar-LED-Flood-Light/1002689960

Looks like 3.6v 0.6w

[exotic island]

Dang, don't know if that would work in the Oregon winters

I'll have to see

[loud ferry]

0.6W doubt it

[serene goblet]

Get a soshine

[quaint steppe]

99% humidity reading wasn't good sign 🫢

[brave pecan]

Eeks! What happened?

[quaint steppe]

No idea where to water gets in but thanks to the android app update i can see that it was a problem for quiet a while

Maybe it's this tiny gap that's there when i hold it together

[serene goblet]

I think your Desicent is wet.. LOL

[open coral]

Do you have any type of breather valve / vent ?

[quaint steppe]

Nope. With this much moisture I'm not sure it would help. That water gets in somewhere. 🤔

[tired rain]

Damn that's a lot of water in there. Yeah that crack in the enclosure doesn't look good. Is that white thing a custom seal you printed ? I guess it was rain that got in ?

[brave pecan]

Do you have a sense on how much the telemetry affects battery life?

[quaint steppe]

yes tpu seal i printed but it might have hurt more than it helped in the end

[quaint steppe]

not really as i'm usually not really looking at the stats since it never drops below 65%

also i only just updated the app so you can see the graphs

[quaint steppe]

the thing is it looks like the screws in the corners are not enough to hold it shut along the edges

[tired rain]

Screws will strip the holes too if tightened to much

[quaint steppe]

yes im always carefull

[quaint steppe]

Ordered some indicating silica gel (cause i ran out of the little bags 😅), so i can test it outside again with my diy tpu seal removed to see if that caused the problem.

[olive citrus]

That's not the original gasket...

I would recommend using the foam that was included in addition to silicon grease

The food grade sticky stuff

That's tpu seal is the issue the tolerance of the plastic is really close. So close that there's quite a bit of suction when you pull it apart after applying grease

The screw holes should be greased too

I used this stuff: https://a.co/d/ambYvvO

[quaint steppe]

there was no foam seal include originally

[olive citrus]

Woah there should have been a really thin one

[tired rain]

yeah the foam gasket is crucial for a water seal.

[olive citrus]

It's not breathable foam

[quaint steppe]

opened up 2 of them, one older and one newer and both are missing the seal 😅

[tired rain]

Wow that sucks

[olive citrus]

you need grease

what type of gasket is it

[quaint steppe]

the white one in the picture was printed from tpu, specifically Bambu TPU 95 HF

made a little silica container and put it outside again without my custom tpu seal and gonna monitor it

need to see what type of grease i can get

[serene goblet]

For INA3221 wiring, battery is supposed to be on ch1, does it matter where solar or rak is ?

[serene goblet]

Flipped solar and battery, bat is now ch1, solar is ch2..

Got my bme680 rak modules finally also..

[tired rain]

@quaint steppe it's worth it to go buy another one if you can find it and pilfer the seal.

[quaint steppe]

the thing is the newer ones i can get now made by a company called "Solar Trading" have a different board in it and the one i got half a year ago also didn't have a seal

[tired rain]

@south pebble yo bro. Have you thought of making a much more beefy screw in slide on mount ? I need something more substantial to mount in a very windy area.

[tired rain]

@quaint steppe I've got an extra seal I could send you.

Are you in the US?

Telephone pole quick mount. Two screws and your done

[quaint steppe]

nope, will see how it holds up without
this thing was 2 years outside before i turned into a node and it looked fine

[tired rain]

depoyed to 10,000 ft

[loud ferry]

did you install it at exactly that point on the pole so it could be precisely 10000' and not 10001' (or worse still, 9999')?

[tired rain]

no just an estimate. actual elevation reported is 3047m : 9996.719 ft !

That was as high as I could reach with a power drill

[serene goblet]

You need to invest in some pole climbing gear.. LOL

[serene goblet]

Anyone have rak bme680 module ? I just installed one in my Lowes solar node, and it's saying it's 105f outside, but my weather station shows 70f.. Could the black enclosure really be getting that hot inside ?

[tired rain]

Yes I think it could get that hot inside there pretty easily.

[brave pecan]

Snow on panel

[wide stratus]

The harbor breeze solar lights are on sale for $10 right now.

[tired rain]

Bring a screw driver and make sure they have the foam gasket

[wide stratus]

I was just thinking about doing that 😂
The first one I got had the gasket.

[serene goblet]

I ordered 3 white and 3 color when I got mine. Wife wanted me to put 2 of the white in the back yard.

[tired rain]

I didn't know they made white ones.

[serene goblet]

First rain on my Lowes solar node, no water inside!

[serene goblet]

The white are on sale for 10 USD right now!

[open coral]

You didn’t test it with a garden hose or sink prior to deployment ?

[serene goblet]

That doesn't test outside real world, tho.. And with how often I have been opening it to work on it.

[serene goblet]

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Harbor-Breeze-1-Watt-Black/5015598033

This is what i bought.. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Harbor-Breeze-60LM-Solar-Flood-Light-0-6-Watt-Black-Solar-LED-Flood-Light/1002689960

[halcyon violet]

FYI I have no idea what I'm doing in Tinkercad but mixed and matched two of the mounts posted in this thread with a couple improvements (at least for my use case).

• For the SMA mount, I added an inset holder for the hex on the SMA connector - may not be any stronger but these insets on other cases make it way easier for me to screw down the bolt to secure the connector from the top.

• For the N-type mount, the changes were (1) opened the hole up a bit to fit up to a 23mm bulkhead connector, (2) added the dovetail hanger from the SMA mount above (so I can quickly swap either style using the same screwed in dovetail) and (3) significantly shortened the arm (since my solar panel will be mounted to hang below the antenna going downward from the arm.

To reiterate, these are very poorly done in Tinkercad but happy to share the files if anyone thinks it'd be useful.

[tired rain]

@halcyon violet nice. Does tinkercad import STL files well?

[halcyon violet]

Ehh I didn't know enough to say for sure but it's pretty good and quick if you only want to do super basic changes. I will say the detailed parts/edges don't look quite as crisp to my (very untrained) eye so it may be lowering the resolution a bit.

[normal fulcrum]

Came up with this for a 32mm mast pipe mount. https://www.printables.com/model/1181878-harbor-breeze-meshtastic-node-32mm-bracket

[brave pecan]

Cool! The N remix was mine, cool to see it getting its own remix!! 🙂

[olive citrus]

It should still work down to 2.Something volts, and the battery won't be damaged if you used the schottky diodes!

[exotic island]

Do only some of them have it?

Anyone tested these in the rain?

[tired rain]

@exotic island yes. No water interesting as long as the foam seal is in place.

[exotic island]

K, Cool

[rapid canopy]

I made one of these last night with a T114. This has to be lowest cost, simplest solar node possible. Just to get a panel and battery and charger for $10 alone would be a deal, but the enclosure is good too. It seems great so far. It’s now outside charging.

Having said that, I placed the antenna hole too far from the center/deepest area. So the cable is pressing against the enclosure and I don’t have a great seal on that side.

I also seem to have lost one of the screws in the process but that’s just annoying.

[hearty flare]

Are these files available anywhere?

[open coral]

Click the links .

[hearty flare]

Thanks, I was referring to the 2, mainly the n-type with the integrated dovetail and shorter arm which doesn’t appear to be linked.

[halcyon violet]

Nope but I'll send em over next time I'm at my computer. The changes were far from professional but both versions are working great for me in PETG printed on a cheap Sovol

[hearty flare]

Much appreciated. I’m using the original arm and dovetail currently. I like the updates you put on them though. Espescially the hex insert holder on the sma arm

[olive citrus]

I put the wire through the hole in the light where the LED lamp wires used to go

Then I used waterproof shoe glue to sorta cement it in place and waterproof it

I really should have tightened an extension sma wire on before gluing it.

[rapid canopy]

For this one I drilled a hole for the sma connector. But I think I solved the problem by getting a wire with a right angle SMA so I’ll be able to get it closed properly. Installing that now.

[olive citrus]

Do you have a USB wire point?

You need to reseal the hole if you removed the lamp