A Complete Raspberry Pi Power Monitoring System

July 24, 2020 by Tom Nardi 60 Comments

As the world has become more environmentally conscious, we’ve seen an uptick in projects that monitor or control home energy use. At a minimum one of these setups involves a microcontroller and some kind of clamp-on current sensor, but if you’re looking for resources to take things a bit farther, this Raspberry Pi energy monitoring system created by [David00] would be a great place to start.

This project includes provides software and hardware to be used in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi to keep tabs on not just home energy consumption, but also production if your home has a solar array or other method of generating its own power. Data is pulled every 0.5 seconds from a MCP3008 ADC connected to up to ~~five~~ six current sensors to provide real-time utilization statistics, and visualized with Grafana so you can see all of the information at a glance.

While [David00] has already done the community a great service by releasing the hardware and software under an open source license, he’s also produced some absolutely phenomenal documentation for the project that’s really a valuable resource for anyone who wants to roll their own monitoring system. He’s even offering hardware kits for anyone who’s more interested in experimenting with the software side of things than building the PCB.

Home energy monitoring projects are certainly nothing new, but the incredible advances we’ve seen in the type of hardware and software available for DIY projects over the last decade has really pushed the state-of-the-art forward. With so many fantastic resources available now, the only thing standing between you and your own home energy monitoring dashboard is desire and a long weekend.

Solar Weather Station Listens For Lightning

July 13, 2020 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

Custom weather stations are a common enough project these days, especially based around the ESP8266. Wire a sensor up to the MCU, power it up with an old phone charger, and you’re half way there. But if you want something that’s going to operate remotely on the long term, you’ve got to put a little more thought into it.

Which is exactly what [BuckarewBanzai] did for his solar powered Raspberry Pi weather station. With an industrial NEMA-rated enclosure, a beefy 35 watt photovoltaic panel, and enough lead-acid battery capacity to keep the show going for days, this build is certainly more robust than most. Some might call it overkill, but we think anyone who’s ever deployed hardware outdoors for more than a few days knows you can never be too careful when Mother Nature is involved.

To keep the 18 Ah battery topped off, [BuckarewBanzai] is using a 10 amp Wanderer charge controller. It sounds as though he burned through a few lesser models before settling on this one; something to consider for your own off-grid projects. An LM2596 regulator is then used to provide a stable 5 V for the Raspberry Pi.

In addition to the BME280 environmental sensor that picks up on temperature, humidity, and pressure, there’s also a AS3935 lightning sensor onboard which [BuckarewBanzai] says can pick up strikes up to 40 kilometers away. All of this environmental data is collected and stored in a local SQLite database, and gets pushed offsite every five minutes with a REST API so it can be visualized with Grafana.

Critics in the audience will no doubt pick up on the solderless breadboard located in the center of the weather station, but [BuckarewBanzai] says he’s already on the case. He’s working on a custom PCB that will accept the various modular components. Not only should this make the station more reliable, but he says it will cut down on the “spaghetti” wiring. Though for the record, this is hardly the worst offender we’ve seen in that department.

Building A Serious Solar Inverter Battery Pack

May 27, 2020 by Lewin Day 35 Comments

If you’re out in the wilderness, having plenty of electricity on hand is a blessing. Eschewing fossil fuels, [LithiumSolar] is, as their name suggests, a fan of other technologies – undertaking the construction of a 3.5kWh solar generator that’s rugged and ready for the outdoors.

The build starts with 18650 lithium-ion cells sourced from a recycler, packed inside obsolete modem battery packs. After harvesting 390 cells, the best 364 are chosen and assembled into plastic holders to create a 14S26P configuration. A spot welder is employed to weld the pack together, with XT60 connectors used as the main bus connectors, albeit in a very non-standard configuration. Balance leads are hooked up to a 14S battery management system, to keep things in check. The huge pack is then installed inside a stout Craftsman toolbox, along with a MPPT solar charger module, and a 1500W inverter for output.

The build video is a great resource for anyone interested in building custom 18650 packs or battery solar power systems. [LithiumSolar] does a great job of clearly explaining each step and the reasons for part selections along the way. Of course, in a neat dovetail to this project, we’ve even seen solar-powered spot welders before – which would be useful if you need to replicate this build out in the field somewhere. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Building A Serious Solar Inverter Battery Pack” →

See If Today’s Air Quality Will Conch You Out

January 20, 2020 by Kristina Panos 16 Comments

Air quality is one of those problems that is rather invisible and hard to grasp until it gets bad enough to be undeniable. By then, it may be too late to do much about it. But if more people were interested in the problem enough to monitor the air around them, there would be more innovators bringing more ideas to the table. And more attention to a problem usually means more accountability and eventual action.

This solar-powered particulate analyzer made by [rabbitcreek] is a friendly way to take the problem out of the stratosphere of ‘someday’ and bring it down to the average person’s backyard. Its modular nature makes it fairly simple to build, and the conch shell enclosure gives it a natural look. That shell also cleverly hides the electronics, while at the same time allowing air and particulates to reach the sensor. If you don’t like the shell enclosure, we think the right type of bird feeder could protect the electronics while allowing airflow.

[rabbitcreek] attached a sizeable solar panel to the shell on a GoPro mount so it can be adjusted to face the sun. The panel charges a Li-Po battery that gets boosted to 5V. Every two hours, a low-power breakout circuit wakes up the Feather ESP32 and takes a reading from the particulate sensor. [rabbitcreek] can easily see the data on his phone thanks to the Blynk app he created.

Why limit this to your yard? Bare ESP32s are cheap enough that it’s feasible to build a whole network of air quality sensors.

Modular Solar-Powered IoT Sensors

January 19, 2020 by Danie Conradie 1 Comment

Bringing a product to market is not easy, if it were everyone would be doing it, and succeeding. The team at Pycno is in the process of launching their second product, a modular solar powered IoT unit called Pulse. It’s always interesting to get an inside look when a company is so open during the development process, and see how they deal with challenges.

Pycno’s first product was a solar powered sensor suite for crops. This time round they are keeping the solar part, but creating a modular system that can accept wired or wireless connections (2G/3G/4G, WiFi, LoRa, GPS and Bluetooth 5) or modules that slide into the bottom of the unit. They plan to open source the module design to allow other to design custom modules, which is a smart move since interoperability can be a big driving factor behind adoption. The ease of plugging in sensors is a very handy feature, since most non-Hackaday users would probably prefer to not open up expensive units to swap out sensors. The custom solar panel itself is pretty interesting, since it features an integrated OLED display. It consists of a PCB with the cutout for the display, with solar cells soldered on before the whole is laminated to protect the cells.

Making a product so completely modular also has some pitfalls, since it can be really tricky to market something able to do anything for anybody. However, we wish them the best of luck with their Kickstarter (video after the break) and look forward to seeing how the ecosystem develops.

When a large community develops around a modular ecosystem, it can truly grow beyond the originator’s wildest dreams. Just look at Arduino and Raspberry Pi. We’re also currently running a contest involving boards for the Feather form factor if you want to get in on the act. Continue reading “Modular Solar-Powered IoT Sensors” →

BEAM Dragonfly Causes A Flap

October 31, 2019 by Al Williams 11 Comments

Normal people throw away stuff when it breaks. But not people like us. Or, apparently, [NanoRobotGeek]. A cheap robotic dragonfly died, and he cannibalized it for robot parts. But he kept the gearbox hoping to build a new dragonfly and, using some brass rod, he did just that.

The dragonfly’s circuitry uses a solar panel for power and a couple of flashing LEDs. This is a BEAM robot, so not a microcontroller in sight. You can see a brief video of how the dragonfly moves.

Continue reading “BEAM Dragonfly Causes A Flap” →

Reflecting On Margaret Hamilton: 50 Years After Apollo 11

July 31, 2019 by Sharon Lin 36 Comments

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, Google created a 1.4-square-mile portrait of NASA software developer Margaret Hamilton using more than 107,000 mirrors from the Ivanpah Solar Facility in the Mojave Desert, a solar thermal power plant with a gross capacity of 392 megawatts.

The fields of heliostat mirrors (173,500 in total) ordinarily focus sunlight on receivers located on the solar power towers, which subsequently generate steam to drive steam turbines. The facility was first connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 before formally opening in February 2014, during which it was the world’s largest solar thermal power station. Ivanpah was developed by BrightSource Energy and Bechtel, with Google contributing $168 million towards its $2.2 billion in costs. Google no longer invests in the facility, however, due to the decline of the price of photovoltaic systems.

The facility has historically taken steps to avoid disrupting the natural wildlife, which includes desert tortoises. The effect of mirror glare on airplane pilots, water concerns, and collisions with birds has also been addressed by the operators of the installation.

According to Google, the image was larger than Central Park and could be seen a mile above sea level. The mirrors are all attached to a rotating mount that maneuvers the mirrors in order to create lighter and darker shades to make up the image.

The Apollo 11 mission, manned by Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins, was the first to bring humans to the moon in 1969. Hamilton‘s role in the team included programming the in-flight software for all of NASA’s Apollo missions. She had also worked on satellite tracking software for the Air Force through Lincoln Lab (started by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and later joined the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. It was, however, her work on creating computer systems to predict and track weather systems for use in anti-aircraft air defenses that made her a candidate for a lead developer role at NASA.

Continue reading “Reflecting On Margaret Hamilton: 50 Years After Apollo 11” →