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@neilh20
Active 3 days, 19 hours agoForum Replies Created
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(previous post deleted and restated) @jp – interesting data. It very much looks like up to early October the solar was delivering enough power for the system.
Then with the seasons solar changing, the solar panel aspect is not delivering the power needed
What I would recommend is a) need to charge up the internal LiIon 4.4Ahr battery
- b) try and get more solar power
for a) my choice is the plentiful USB battery pack which can supply at least the 4Ahr at 5V. Your choice of Lithium primary batteries is also good – Li Primary have a good discharge characteristic – meaning 4 batteries at 6V would supply most of their power before dying. Alkaline and standard Carbon Zinc decay to about half the voltage when supplying their current.
However the AA Alkaline are rate at 3Ahr so probably a good boost to a partially dischatged 4.4Ahr battery
b) So anything you can do to help out a better solar aspect – less shade would help, and solar panels are best set at an optimal 45 degress or more from horizontal, but depends on the type of solar bracket. Winter sun is the more challenging, so best optimized for that – but I haven’t had much luck with low cost brackets to be able to do that.
An upgrade of the solar panel that is under 10V open circuit and at least 2.5W ~ another option https://voltaicsystems.com/3-5-watt-panel/ and of course the range https://voltaicsystems.com/small-solar-panels/ And also some same manufacturer here https://www.adafruit.com/product/5367
I’d be interested in what the software that you are using,
Particularly see what it thinks it is doing with low battery V – which results in what I’ve labeled as “Unmanaged Power Demand”. Its pretty amazing it still manages to get enough power to broadcast over the modem. The .csv file from the uSD would tell more of a story of what is happening when it resets.
This would be my analysis of the battery voltage readings from the site
<p style=”background: white; vertical-align: baseline; margin: 0in 0in .25in 0in;”><span style=”font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Roboto; color: black;”>(I’m still analyzing my systems as to the gap that I’ve labeled “MMW System wide data loss”)</span></p>deleted and restated below
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Hi @jp – I only install 2.5W or for a shady location I upgrade to 10W. Can you share the site that is publishing on, and can see how fast the power went down.
The non recharge batteries could work – but you need to do a lot more power calculations to understand how long they will work. 4 batteries (4*1.6V =6V) will work for a boost plugged into USB-C, or a special connector instead of the Li-Ion – but then you need (3 * 1.6V = 4.8V) … , and probably D cells better options
My first suggestion is for you to get a USB Power Pack and just recharge the internal Li-Ion – I purchased this option a 10AHr USB, “10000mAh Dual USB Portable Charger, ”
and with a USB C cable plugged it into the Mayfly 1.1 – that recharged the LiIon battery in 2 hours
See https://monitormywatershed.org/sites/TUCA_Mi03/ battery Voltage – from Oct 1st. With the change in season there was less solar its deep in a Redwood forest The voltage declned from 4.125V and to about3.83V. At 3.8V my software stops it from transmitting readings. I was on site Nov 8, and plugged in the USB Power pack at 11:30 and it fully charged the 4.4Ahr battery by 13:00 – 90minutes. Then I also upgraded the panel to a 10W panel.
This was the context of the system. I align the solar panel to SW, but there was a lot of trees at that aspect, and with winter the solar aspect was decreasing.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/HMi5TDmh6n2rYdzA6
Though after the above I moved the solar panel to 15′ away, and then upgraded the 2.5W to 10W solar panel – which gets enough dappled ambient for an hour or so to boost the battery enough
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