This one took weeks to write. It's about me finding a way to significantly reduce the power consumption of a Raspberry Pi Pico W working as a weather station, collecting environmental data.
I am also writing about powering the Pico using solar panels, and this time it's a success, my weather station can now run indefinitely, powered by the sun!
#Internet#Starlink#5G#SolarPanels#OffGrid#Technology
I was hoping for advice /help please ,I am not at all clear about 5g and other off grid internet options.I had 4g my last place it seemed to use very little power ,but had to be ended when the forestry blocked the signal.Here we have highland wifi ,but my daughters getting starlink which I refuse to use ,EVER .I will carry on paying for highland wifi ,but need something portable for use in a tent/caravan at the off grid site below soon
Hello fellow #Vegans
An #introduction as I have just joined here (if you recognise my avatar, that's because I was previously on climatejustice.social)
I have been #vegan since #Veganuary 2019 and currently live aboard a #narrowboat touring England's canals. We are #carfree and mostly #offgrid. I love living out in #nature, foraging - especially for #tea leaves - and living a slow, as-calm-as-possible life.
My hobbies include #cooking and I share my #WFPB#VeganRecipe creations on my ko-fi page - the food is good, the photography not so great!
I am also a keen reader and post two vegan #BookReviews each week - one fiction and one nonfiction. (If you're a #VeganAuthor please feel welcome to tell me about your books.) You can see my most recently posted reviewed books in my header image.
I wanted to have Wi-Fi on my off-grid allotment, so I made my LTE modem run on battery power. In the post I describe the build process and the list of needed parts. It's a fun and simple project for everyone with a similar need :)
I made a new blog post, and in it I show how I build a device to monitor the voltage of a 12V battery and share it over the Internet. Something that might be useful for remote astrophotography rigs or when building off-grid power installations. I'm using a Raspberry Pi Pico and some basic circuitry to make it all work. Take a look!
My life partner and I live on a 13 hectare #SmallFarm in rural #Merida#Venezuela. We raise dairy cows, heritage breed creole pigs, chickens, geese, fish, and #freerange children.
Does anyone have experience with #humanure processing?
We're weighing the pros and cons of #biogas digestion and typical turn-heavy aerobic #composting. Also thinking about a combination of the two but going from anaerobic to aerobic processing could create more labor.
🚐🔋 Introducing the Struggle Bus, my little electric camper van I've been living in whilst on the road doing woodland creation/ restoratioration over the country for @ProtectEarthUK.
It's so simple, but it's brought a lot of freedom from the grid when travelling, and has kept me independent and mobile when injured and sick.
I can now say that double-sided transparency #solar panels are indeed a good idea. I’ve put my new 200w of this through the rigours of winter, and find that even when catty corner to the rising Sun, it starts pumping amps earlier than my normal panels and more of them. It melts off snow earlier, too. Snow albedo helps even more with ambient light. Worthwhile to get these to use for ground panels for the #offgrid#solarpunk.
I had so much fun building my 12V powerbank in a toolbox that I built another one, this time a mini edition, with a 10Ah battery. The special feature of this one are the protected connectors. I am very happy with how it turned out. I bought the battery on a sale for half price, so the total cost was below 100PLN / 25 EUR. #diy#offgrid
I've changed servers due to technical issues and am reposting my introduction, as none of my posts migrated 🙁
Good afternoon everyone! I am new to Mastadon and prefer the tusk to the musk. I am an artist who works primarily in clay and specialize in raku pottery and explore mythology and nature in my work. Some of my other interests include:
Here's a big #offgrid site: 5 megawatts of solar (plans for 25, think 100 acres of panels), with 3 megawatts of batteries, to charge EVs and electric semi trucks (at 1.2 megawatts).
It's wild that this is (apparently) economical now. There are surely better arbitrage opportunities with a grid connection, to charge the batteries from the grid and sell back to the grid as well as selling EV fast charges.
But interconnection lag be damned, we need this now.
I needed a portable power source for #astrophotography and to light my garden shed. The available solutions were not powerful enough or too expensive, so I constructed my own 12V powerbank. In my blog post I talk about the design and the build process. Anyone living off-grid can build something similar and use it daily.
Climbing the #EnergyAccess ladder at a Finnish #offgrid summer cottage:
The first PV panel 15yrs ago was 40W and ok for phone charging and 2 LEDs (tier 1)
The current 160W panel has been ok for using a laptop for several hours a day (tier 2)
Now I brought two additional 400W panels in order to power a fridge (tier 3).
A new battery might not be necessary if I keep the thermal mass inside the fridge high with water bottles etc and install one of the new panels towards east and one west.
Not as "prise it out of my cold dead hands" as I expected, so I won't be grappling with the dilemma of paying Elon more than £1k/year. Phew!
It's impressively easy to set up and use and works on the roof of my #narrowboat. The 45W consumption has some downside but the fact is I really can do 99% of what I want using a 4G mobile at £240/year. So it's not worth the money to me.
My friend, also on a boat, uses it for endless video conferences. #offgrid
The fun of self build. I've spent most of the day working out how to design a sewage treatment plant and drainage field where the water table almost reaches the surface in winter.
I'm now looking at a holding tank and pump to squirt the outgoing liquid from the treatment plant into a "drainage mound". As the saying goes ... its a load of sh1t.
My next task this weekend is to do a "percolation test" so I know how big to make everything.
Gestern bin ich auf #Risiko gegangen und habe die Popkornmaschine über das Bordnetz des #Velostudio laufen lassen Auf dem Foto ist der Stecker in der Steckdose die ich über einen Wandler aus den Batterien mit 240 Volt speisen kann. Und: es geht - und sogar ziemlich lange. Gestartet bin ich mit 52 Volt Batteriespannung. Der Wandler schaltet sich bei 45 Volt ab. Bis da hin wurde drei Stunden #Popkorn gemacht. Da hätte ich eine Option für #OffGrid Popkorn ;-) #Energiewende#Fahrrad#Dortmund
A Non-Technical Introduction Video to Meshtastic Off-Grid Radio Communications
This is an open-source solution that works with inexpensive LoRa radios, and your mobile phone or laptop, to be able to pass messages directly, or in shared channels, between the various nodes with no Internet or mobile phone coverage required.
This rainy week has been challenging for #offgrid baking, it takes 25% of my battery to bake a #sourdough loaf, but I've managed to make 2. This one ran the battery down to 9%. #solarpunk
Hidden Lotus Herbs is getting ready to move to our new #farm site and really ramp up our operations!
For some backstory,
I was the recipient of a fund from @coop to start a worker-owned #cooperative and decided to make it an herbal apothecary!
We've been operational for around six months and are now starting our regenerative agroecological farm and increasing the capacity of our free clinic.
However, the #renewableenergy systems we're building are more expensive than we budgeted for, and we could use some help getting the farm and clinic going financially.
We're really needing help from our community to make all this cool stuff happen!
If you can spare some $, please consider supporting our transition and future. If you can't, please share far and wide!