Off Grid Solar Powered WiFi Mesh and Camera station, Part 1
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
- Our off-grid homestead moves along with this project for a solar-powered wi-fi mesh and camera station.
In this Part 1 video, we walk through the project goals and the electrical hookup of the main components, with special attention on the implementation of DC-powered POE and the use of a bluetooth-enabled solar charge controller.
This video is a bit more "classroom" discussion than normal, but the Part 2 "installation" video will have more physical work and scenery!
(see part 2 here: • Off Grid Solar Powered... )
00:00 Intro to the problem
01:47 Intro to the problem-solving
03:49 PoE Discussion
08:07 Solar Charging Discussion
09:19 Why the "load" connection on a charge controller is useful
13:10 Fuses are your friend
15:30 Progressively plugging in loads
18:46 Charging in the cold
21:19 Functional Prototype
Not a sponsored video.
If you use my Amazon links, you pay the same, but as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/15 Solar Charge Controller amzn.to/3Ez8sAw
Victron Smart Battery Sense Voltage and Temperature Sensor amzn.to/3kpwsiE
LiTime/AmpereTime 12v 100Ah LiFePO4 Battery amzn.to/3m3UTTj
Renogy 100w 12v Solar Panels (2-pack) amzn.to/3xRCdsx
Tycon TP-DCDC-1248GD-HP 35w DC POE Injector amzn.to/3YY7ZQy
Unifi U6 Mesh Access Point store.ui.com/collections/unif...
Unifi G5 Bullet Camera store.ui.com/collections/unif...
Unifi Switch Flex POE powered managed ethernet switch store.ui.com/collections/unif...
12 Gauge Blade Type Fuse Holders amzn.to/3IuhjVi
iCrimp (IWISS) Self-Adjustable Ferrule Crimper amzn.to/3Ss1kvs
Anderson Powerpole Connectors (red and black housings with 30A contacts) amzn.to/3kmdLMN
iCrimp (IWISS) Crimper for Anderson Powerpole connectors amzn.to/3ZgH81P
Video recorded primarily with Fuji X-S10 Mirrorless Camera amzn.to/3ZiRkac
Audio recorded primarily with DJI Mic amzn.to/3m65hJZ - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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Love your videos. Flew my plane over your head the other day. Looks like fun projects👍 Keep the videos coming!
Thank you for watching! Safe flying, too!
Your information is laid out in a way that makes the idea of doing this more feasible. I was thinking to save power, you could source a pair of the older AC mesh and with the addon directional antennas, you could tune the power way down and still have a good connection; or if you don't need wifi at the entennas, you could use a couple of Nanostation AC Locos.
Hello from the Philippines! I really enjoyed your video(s). I spent a number of years in Lake Havasu City and Parker, AZ and often drove through Joshua Tree to Los Angeles. So cool to see your vids. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed em!
Thank You Nieghbor for these very helpful videos
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the wonderful explanation!
Glad you liked it! Check out part 2 for the install 🙌
Excellent video, thank you
You're welcome, thx for watching 🙏
very cool video. I learned so much! Thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks for sharing my friend 👍
Thanks for the video. Your channel will take off soon. Keep at it. Great work.
Thank you! Glad you appreciated it.
I was looking for a DC PoE injector, nice thanks for the link
You're welcome! They have a variety of models that I've used for different applications and they're good at what they do.
Very nice... Keep these videos coming!
Thanks! Still trying to figure out what people like. Fine line between not being anything new and being so long or educational that nobody watches! Appreciate the encouragement 🙌
@@LetsOverthinkThis I could chat this all day! LOL! It would be nice to see something on the process of choosing your location and what regulations you need to honor in your building process.
Great video.
Good video, great explain!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Wow Tractor Videos And Camera Videos , Yup Glade i Subbed.
I run a Pretty Large Camera Shop Retail / Installing Cameras and Videos like this i like!
And offgrid is always my dream , But with running a business in the city is always hard to get time to do things.
Glad you're enjoying what I'm posting so far! And thanks for the comment :)
Great Video!
Thanks rich!
@@LetsOverthinkThis would you share your 3d files i want to do something very similar to this
Amperes Time which is the new L I Time has a heated battery. I just bought a SOK heated battery. They heat first from the solar panels and then charge up the battery. Good investment for the chance of below-temperature charging. your recommendation on Victron is spot on. They in my honest opinion are the best.
yeah, for sure heated is the way to go here and SOK makes good stuff! I actually bought this battery a while ago (under the old name) when I was putting it to use indoors. So it may not work great outdoors, but figure I'll give it a try first!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Great videos! What is the brand/size of the white wires you used for the harness'? Thanks!
This is great - one would think that "WiFi in a Box" was available commercially, or really "PoE in a box" coming with everything but the end device (e.g. WiFi Access Point), then you can just drop these things all over the place and plug Mesh AP's in them. Yes, you explained how you could do that but rather than buying and building with all he parts, would much prefer to buy one SKU! But that's not the name of this channel of course :-)
It's a good point but I think the problem is that the poe relies entirely on how many things you want to power and the environment. Even if they had the poe in a box for one wifi device, what assumptions would they make around how many hours of sun and at what location, you know? The system I needed for my 2 cameras and one antenna, located in a place with lots of solar energy and few full cloud days is different from what others would need. It's very hard to generalize and they'd have to WAY overdo it to actually promise a working product that was all in one. Just my 2 cents!
agreed, and the different types of PoE as you mentioned - I am a Network Engineer in my day life :-)
I still think WiFi is driving force as some/many have figured out power - I use Blink outdoor camera and while their videos aren’t the highest quality, they work on AA batteries and last for years (I think)!
Great part 1 and 2 but whats your actual internet service/modem?
Starlink! Works great but only option out here anyway.
Nice but I'd used one of the smaller EcoFlow systems. But a really nice concept
Totally would work.... I have a bigger Bluetti so I'm familiar with those products. Unfortunately you'd need a Delta 2 to match the 1.2kwh of energy I have here which gets pretty pricey. IE a small ecoflow doesn't have nearly the energy. But lots of ways to get it done for sure and thanks for watching!
the only thing i would change
is to have a bit more solar to charge the battery enough
so that it could power a small heater in the winter
so it can be in an insulated box
and continue working below freezing
Howdy, yes, for sure! I would likely advocate for a heated battery since a lot of the needed parts would be built in, plus it would only be heating the battery, but either way a must-have for cold winters. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Thank you for your reply.
I eagerly await your next videos on this project. This is one of my favorite projects.
@@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration Thanks! So glad you like it. Just posted the second part, in case you haven't seen it yet: th-cam.com/video/DDD0V3KXKgI/w-d-xo.html
How are you getting your internet out there, I imagine it is by satellite. Which service did you choose?
I was getting it from a company that has a relay station on the mountain and uses ubiquity gear to give you internet in these remote parts since I have line of site to their antenna. But since starlink came out it blew everyone out of the water in my opinion.
I built a very similar solar station (added a NanoStation 5AC loco to enable a greater distance) but the system powers itself down in less than 24 hours of uptime. Can you provide more details regarding your specific configuration?
- How did you connect the Solar panels; serial or parallel?
- Any special configurations set in the Victron controller?
- Any special configurations set in the Unifi Flex switch?
- What gauge wire did you use for the various connections?
- Series (whenever possible I'd rather have lower current on wires and subsequently less heat and voltage drop)
- YES, will return to this at the end.
- No config at all on the unifi switch BUT it's actually not capable of driving 2 of my cameras and a unifi 6 mesh antenna, so one of those has another POE injector driving it from DC (another Tycon, but a smaller one).
- I think 10AWG for the battery to the Victron and 10AWG for the panels to the Victon and something like 14AWG for the POE injector(s) but I could be wrong. Please do the math and choose the right gauge for you!
Okay, back to Victron. For me I noticed something weird. My remote station would power down every day for a few hours but when I looked at the Victron logs, it was always when the battery was actually fully CHARGED, not discharged. And I noticed when it all shut down, the light on the Tycon was another color (red, I think). I ended up figuring out that even though the Tycon is SUPPOSED to work up to 15v, it actually shuts down from high voltage somewhere around 14.5v. Which meant it was shutting down just before the victron stopped topping off the lithium battery. To solve this I just changed the top voltage the victron will charge the battery to (I think they call it absorption) from something like 14.6 to something like 14.3 and I've never had this problem again!
If you built exactly my system, this may be your problem. But obviously your's could just be shutting down for any other reason. Let me know!
Can you share the link for the smaller POE injector, and/or if you've already identified a larger POE injector that can handle the full load needed by the UniFi Flex and 3 devices, I'd appreciate it.
So, my system won't charge higher than 13.4v. It hits a clear ceiling and I'm not sure where it's being limited. I've tried several options but in order to reduce the variables, I have now reset the MPPT back to the factory config, only changing the Battery preset to Smart Lithium (LiFePO4), and I set Load output to Always Off so the system only charges.
- I assume you are using the same Battery preset option, correct? If not, which preset and with which configs?
- Which Operation mode do you use, BatteryLife, Automatic Energy Selector (AES), or something else?
I really appreciate you researching and sharing your work on this subject.
@@LetsOverthinkThis
@@jkrahulec unfortunately I'm not on my land so I can't look at my settings, though I don't think I played much with the voltages other than what I already mentioned. That said, we're missing a lot of useful troubleshooting info from you. The main benefit of the victron is the logs and graphs of all sorts of useful info. What does it say is happening when you hit that 13.4v mark? IE what charging mode is it in? And what is your solar input voltage? The victron can't/won't charge higher than what it's being given and I think the max is actually a few volts lower than what it's being given....
@@LetsOverthinkThis I wanted to follow-up and thank you. Your project was a great primer for me. I successfully built my solar station, which includes an airMAX NanoStation 5AC Loco (for longer distance network connectivity), a USW Flex switch, a UAP AC M (prior generation outdoor mesh AP), and two G4 Bullet cameras. It performs like a champ.
I went with the UAP AC M (prior generation outdoor mesh AP) because the power draw is *much* lower than the U6 Mesh.
@@jkrahulec Wow, I'm so glad I helped but shocked and delighted you came back to let me know! It's MUCH appreciated as much of youtube is fairly one-directional. Enjoy your system and thanks again!
How does the camera obtain the internet signal from this setup? Is the access point sending internet access through the ethernet cable back to the POE switch, and from the switch to the camera?
Yes, basically the ethernet connector on the mesh antenna functionally makes anything connected to that look exactly like it's plugged into the ethernet cable the "host" mesh antenna is attached to, so I can plug anything into that little remote switch and for all it knows, that switch is wired into the switch in the container (albeit at a lower speed).
@@LetsOverthinkThis Thank you! I hadn't seen this setup before.
can you secure the mesh network cameras and antenna with passwords?
Oh for sure.
Should have used a Battle Born Battery but looks great!
Yeah ive heard great things but given the price difference couldn't justify it for this use case. Maybe next time!
@@LetsOverthinkThis but you did everything else with the best! And add more cameras on there you have the ports, and paint everything with Bedliner including the printed parts, last they make waterproof totes with a seal on the lid
@@samanthapowell5882 All good points! The bedliner is a great idea for keeping the UV off of the plastic. Thanks again :)
Would a unifi point-to-point bridge works better ?
"Better" depends on how you define it :)
Yes, that would give e a more stable and faster connection over a longer distance, which would be better if I was only interested in connecting to my remote cameras. BUT I also wanted to extend my wifi over to where that remote station was. If I used a PtP bridge, I'd have to power yet another antenna (the PtP receiver) as well as the wifi AP I have there, and since it's all solar, that extra ~6 watts running 24 hours a day does actually matter. So the mesh is more "elegant" in that it serves my needs with the minimum components needed. But indeed, it's not as fast as a PtP would be and it's pushing the limit on distance. Another 50 feet or so and I'd probably have to go with a PtP.
Great question though, and thanks for watching!
@@LetsOverthinkThis Thanks for your reply, that's really helpful. May I ask what's the difference in speed (PtP receiver vs unifi mesh) ?
what is the brand name of the 100watt solar panel?
Those are Renogy panels. All of the links are in the video description btw.
Missed opportunity to simplify with a Linovision POE switch that directly accepts 12-48v and gives you 60w of poe at 12v in and 120w at 24-48v in. I built basically the same thing on one of my silos to get wifi in the field. Mounted everything to the roof with all my electronics in a pelican case under the solar panels
Nice! I wanted to stay with unifi but that's a good option if it outputs actual 802.3 af and not just passive poe. Most just output passive poe which isnt good enough for these cameras. What model are you using?
@@LetsOverthinkThis using the U6 long range AP and G5 bullet cam. A used LG 305w solar panel, a victron mppt100/20, enjoybot 100ah lithium iron and Lino vision 5 port switch. Everything is mounted in a overstock pelican case that was designed to fit a ventilator from the pandemic days. The panels keep the pelican case shaded to hopefully prevent overheating, and I am in a climate with very few days below freezing so I don’t have a temperature sensor. They claim it is 802.3 af/at and I haven’t had any issues in 5ish months since install.
I guess you have to know the world of three-letter acronyms. Man, you lost me!
Tell me which ones I failed to explain and I'll try and help!
@@LetsOverthinkThis I'm not understanding WIFI mesh. I understand repeaters for I have a RV repeater set inside my metal barn with an outside antenna that picks up the WIFI from the house and rebroadcasts it to the inside and about 50' from the building. I would like to use wireless cameras to monitor different spots on my ranch. I have done several solar systems, but I don't understand what a POE is? Is it a way to hook repeaters or is it an ethernet block?
@@kevinholland4156 Hey Kevin. Normally with a repeater you can't have the same wifi name since it's actually competing with the original. You may be getting away with it if you're in a metal barn, but the benefit of mesh is that's you can expand your network with the same network name almost infinitely in any direction you want.
POE is power over ethernet... I probably talked for 5+ minutes about it, it's neither of the things you mentioned. It's just a way of POWERING devices through the ethernet cable itself.
@@LetsOverthinkThis The one in the building has a second name and shows up as a second wifi connection with a separate password. It does just pick up the WiFi from the house though.
@@kevinholland4156 Right, thats what I was saying in the video about the benefit of a mesh being that they all have the same network name. Imagine if you used repeaters to cover a large area you'd have a bunch of network names and your devices would always be hopping between them....