[plug] battery / solar powered monitoring system

[Luke John]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll hopefully be able to try a few
different things over the w/e.

@nick - I'm not sure software wise yet, I'm currently looking online
for a cheap android phone to play about on.


Kind Regards
Luke John



On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Nick Bannon <nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 02:48:31PM +0800, Onno Benschop wrote:
> [HTC Desire, 3.7V lithium cell, 1400 mAh]
>>    - Running time, max 14 hours
>>    - Usage, 100mA per hour
>>    - 14 days is 336 hours
>>    - Usage over 14 days is 33Ah
>>    - 20% fudge, is 40Ah
>
> You've got a working solution here, Luke. Depending on fudge factors,
> that's almost low enough for a pair of cheap 1.5W solar battery
> maintainers to keep up with. If you replaced the basic USB charger
> with an efficient switching charger that only needed about 40mA at 12V,
> it would be: on average you'll get the equivalent of 4-6 Peak Sunlight
> Hours at 2*1.5W, per day:
>
> http://www.solarstreetscapes.com/page119086.cfm
>
> ...at which point you could make do with a cheaper car battery that only
> needed to last a few days of poor light at a time and not be flattened
> repeatedly.
>
> You could add a battery monitoring LED in view of the camera, or a whole
> bunch more fairly-power-friendly input/output/monitoring with something
> like: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK
>
> Other phones, careful software that kept the screen off, perhaps uploaded
> photos in 10 minute batches instead of keeping the 3G connection open
> constantly... could help. So - what software will you be using?
>
> Nick.
>
> --
>   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
> nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal
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