What started as a single Cattle Camera soon multiplied like rabbits (or Raspberry Pi’s) into several discreet Pi Cameras and Solar Generators mounted on fence lines with 50W Solar Panels strewn about. They talked discreetly to a TP-Link CPE210 AP mounted on top of the cow barn.
The remote cameras worked OK but the TP-Link was finicky in AP mode with half a dozen separate devices pushing 25-30 Mbps and seemed sensitive to Wi-Fi Frequency. Think TP-Link CPE210’s are meant to work point-point in what they call “MAXstream” mode.
By this point I had learned the difference between PWM and MPPT controllers, basically if you’re going to have more than 100W solar power and 100Ah battery capacity MPPT make sense.
There were also many ESP8266 IOT devices on the network by now, weather stations, temp sensors, motion sensors, IR lights for night vision and water pumps.
I had also acquired a few used large solar panels that needed a home. Plus I had an old wind turbine in the barn made from an Amatek PWM motor and PVC pipe blades. Made sense to put all that together in one place.
The catalyst was a You Tube streak of Outhouse videos, easy to build with 4 sheets of plywood and I liked the old school look. The 4X4 pallet size would be easy to move with the tractor forks making it mobile. Why not…
The Outhouse was born from some new materials and some old stuff laying around the place. Battens were added to the plywood giving it the same ‘board and bat’ look of the existing out buildings. It now has a few coats of the same red stain we typically have around.
Mounted to the roof is a old used 24V 185W Solar Panel. There is probably room to mount 3 or 4 new 100W panels but that would require $$ and a bigger controller than what I had at the time.
Rev 2 of the Solar Panel Electronics is a bit more tidy that the prototype wired up for testing. It was also much easier to build on a board vs mounting and wiring all the components in situ.
The 10A EPEVER Tracer AN Series MPPT Charge Controller outputs Modbus via RS485 to a Raspberry Pi running Node-RED. The Pi is housed in a standard project box cutout for the LCD screen. Another box is cutout for the 12V switch panel. MPPT Controller load output terminates on an automotive style fuse block and feeds the switch panel to outputs on the terminal block up top. The Bestek 1000W inverter is standalone and doesn’t draw enough standby power (while off) to warrant a relay. Not shown also on the Pi is a HiLetgo BME280 sensor that measures atmospheric pressure (Barometer) Temperature & Humidity.
Adam Welch has a really nice Node Red EPEVER Dashboard on GitHub that pushes data to InfluxDB. Node-Red also collects data from IOT devices for weather sensors. MotionEye running on the Pi supports a local USB camera mounted outside above the door.
Grafana reads data from InfluxDB for a beautiful dashboard that can be infinitely customized. Both Influx & Grafana can run stand alone (local network) on a Raspberry Pi (or PC) and/or fully cloud based requiring no additional hardware/software. Cloud base is easy to share a dashboard with the public, for example Solar Shed.
Battery bank is currently 2 Interstate 6 Volt Golf Cart Batteries wired in series for 200Ah or 2,400 Watts of power. The TL-WR841N Router runs on 12V and connects over LAN cable to a 24V (passive POE) TP-Link CPE210 mounted on the Wind Generator mast. A 20 year old Flexcharge Controller takes raw power from the equally ancient Wind Generator and also charges the batteries.
Like any project Scope Creep happens and things can get messy. In this case the addition of hacked weather station electronics in the Dry Box. An old Davis 6410 Anemometer was revived thanks to Magnus Per it sends data to a MQTT Server also running on the Pi. There is also a HiLetgo INA219 sensing charge voltage from the Wind Generator Controller and sending MQTT data to Pi.
Have spare parts (somewhere) to build another Wind Generator, maybe it will get documented when/if it happens. The 20 year old Amatek PWM motor still puts out enough juice to maintain the batteries if wind speed is 10 MPH or more. Rotor and Blades were originally Trinado AL from TLG Windpower but a blade strike (dodgy first mount) damaged one so replacements were made from PVC. Surprisingly they still work after all these years. The hub is still available from Windy Nation and I still have a few good blades for the pattern…
Also pictured the Davis 6410 Anemometer, a couple Dry Box Pi Cam’s and the TP-Link CPE210 client that links via “MAXstream” to it’s AP mounted on yet another (defunct) weather station at the cow barn.
An old piece of gutter collects rainwater and keeps the cattle water trough full. Don’t worry about leaving the light on, it’s an LED and only sips power. No worries if you do; Alexa, Google or Siri can all turn it off:-/