I connected a second #battery to my #solar node (one in the #RAK, one in the #MPPT board). I thought the second RAK would drain first, but that's completely backwards! From the RAK's perspective, it's always going to draw from the solar side, so it'll never use its own battery until the other one ia dead and it's dark out. The other interesting fact is the RAK battery went from almost no charge to 70% in a single day. Why? It's draining the other battery. Why? Again, as far as it is concerned, that isn't a second battery, it's a solar panel. All this means that of I ever see #meshtastic report a low battery, I know we are in real dangerous territory. That'd mean it drained one battery completely, which is not trending in the right direction! Experiments are fun 🤓

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The tides are starting to turn against RAK Wireless. I'm running into problems with both nodes now. 🙁 Node 1 was working just fine, but now it isn't running with the solar/battery power boards (19013). It will run with a 19012 (same thing + USB-C). But it gets even weirder. If I power it using an IO extension board (5804) with a micro USB cable, it doesn't appear to boot unless that 19012 board is connected. There's nothing plugged into the 19012 board mind you, but just having it connected seems to be vital. And if the 19013 boards would also make it work, I could rationalize this, but they don't. So, like, what? Both my 19013 boards went bad at the exact same time? Seems highly unlikely! I haven't flashed the firmware, changed any settings or anything. I just woke up and this is the state it was in.

Some back of the napkin math says my #solar node will probably cost $200 in hardware if everything was bought new (I'm reusing solar panels and batteries), excluding development costs, of course. One node could cover a small town (e.g. 200,000 people) if put 100 ft up in the air. I think I could get it down to $100 per kit if going as cheap as possible (smaller battery capacity, smaller antenna, not as much expandability/customization, etc.). However that $100 number **does** include a battery and solar panel! If bought in bulk, both of these numbers could come down by at least 10% by saving on shipping costs of components. #meshtastic #electronics #radio #mesh #decentralize #distributed

The block diagram ended up being a lot simpler than I was fearing (I left off the unused ports, like +5V power in to the MPPT board). I currently have the battery pack connected to the RAK because that allows me to see the battery voltage over #Meshtastic. I'm not sure if the RAK's battery charging is as efficient as the MPPT board, or of it has the charging profile (adjusting current based on the battery's voltage), so I had the #battery pack over there at first. But being able to remotely monjtor the battery's charge is vital not and would be important for monitoring and troubleshooting later. Now I have to wait a few days to see how well this works. In the meantime, I'll probably build another battery pack or two. I see no reason to leave off the secondary pack, at least for my prototyping. The final build may be smaller, depending on how big the box will be. Besides, it may be appropriate for different nodes to have different battery capacities. An outdoor node in Montana should probably have more battery capacity than one in Texas if it wants to be online 24/7 in the winter. #meshtastic #mesh #network #decentralize #radio #electronics #distributed #meshnet

Wow, even with cloudcover and it being winter (less hours of sun and more atmosphere absorbing the energy of the light we do get), my #solar node went from completely dead to 6%. I'm not sure if it died overnight, but it was still on at midnight, which is far better than I expected. I'm not sure how replicable it'll be since I hand made the solar panel and battery pack, but I'll share what I've learned.

I currently have my #solar #meshtasic node in my kitchen window. It's completely cloudy, the panel is at a terrible angle, the light is going through a UV filter from the window, and it STILL has enough power to run. I'm not sure it's got enough juice leftover to also charge the battery pack, but I'm impressed it can even power on given the compete lack of direct sunlight. When I get the next iteration of it going, I'll set it up outside and take a picture.

I talked to a power supply engineer and he confirmed the MPPT board I bought is a cheap one that can only charge #batteries. He also pointed me to a high quality MPPT board that can tie together #solar, +5VDC, batteries and output +5VDC. It handles everything: the charging profile of the batteries, voltage conversions, and switching between sources. So I orderd one, naturally. If it works as expected, I'll have go revisit the power situation on the RAK side. No point in having the solar/battety power block if I don't need it. I'll keep everyone posted. #electronics #meshtastic #radio #hardware #mesh #network

After ordering a bajillion different connectors and waiting for them to arrive, I have now made a nearly complete prototype of my #solar #meshtastic #radio node. The current sensor is a bust l. When the battery is dead, the solar panel can't power the device or charge the battery pack if run through the current sensing circuit. I'll double check the documentation to make sure I didn't miss anything, but that's looking like it's going to be a bummer. And I say *nearly* complete because I haven't wired in the MPPT board to make the most out of the #solar cell. (Hmm, I should check the current limit on that to figure out how many solar panels it can handle... hopefully at least one, ideally multiple in parallel). #electronics #solarpunk #decentralized #mesh #network #decentralize #MeshNet

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This site looks like it has some cool stuff and a lot of absolute garbage mixed in. At $20, I can't imagine the jeans are high quality, but they do get style points.

Any bitcoin lightning node runners want a small amount of inbound liquidity? I want to set up a channel for my newly spun up lightning node to play around with it. It won't cost you any sats, but you will have to put up with my potential fuck ups until I figure out what I'm doing (and maybe even after I figure out what I'm doing).