SolarPi – solar-powered #RaspberryPi monitoring house environment / @Raspberry_Pi

SolarPi

Here’s a website running directly off of a Raspberry Pi powered by the sun from a 1.2m x 0.5m solar powered grid.

SolarPi.

Currently, the site contains a Met Office widget for the weather, Raspberry Pi uptime counter, solar panel output, mains power usage and house temperature over a week and over the current day.

 

5 comments for “SolarPi – solar-powered #RaspberryPi monitoring house environment / @Raspberry_Pi

  1. I’d love to do the solar thing, but these panels cost lots. 🙁 100 Watt panel costs nearly £100, which is 50 years electricity for a model B running 24/7/265 or 200 years for a model A.

    If we had some sunshine in the UK, it might be possible to use a much smaller panel, but even then you have to factor in the cost of a battery for overnight. It’s an expensive game.

    • Yeah, I just thought it was an interesting experiment but, frankly, only for those who have a spare £150-ish to spend.
      What I’d love to do is to use those lipos from the Jam, but alas you need a charger for it and they cost, too, even if you can work out which charger to get and then how to hook it up.
      It seems that the best battery solution, or the simplest anyway, is those “mobile phone” USB battery packs, which aren’t without their flaws (like not saying how long they’ll last, but let’s not start _that_ again) but which do at least seem to be very reliable.
      I say just invent a battery that charges from foul weather. We’d be quids in then. 🙂

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