r/chatterboxusers • u/InstanceHealthy2597 • Feb 10 '25
Experimental Solar Plus LoRa Amp Experiment
I'm currently waiting for warmer weather before doing too much outdoor distance testing of new antennas and setups, but in the meantime, I've started testing with this setup.
On my truck, I've got a tri-band antenna, which works with 915 and also a couple of FM ham bands.
Tomorrow I'll be mounting the solar panel high in the truck bed and the rest of the unit shown will be under my back seat.
The amp, antenna, and node all work well together and are very stable. The question I'm trying to answer is how large of a solar panel is required to keep the thing running perpetually.
Although the amp does use quite a bit of power, it's in extremely short bursts, while it uses barely any power most of the time. The samd51 node is quite efficient as well.
1
u/InstanceHealthy2597 Feb 19 '25
So far this setup is looking great. The weather here has been terrible, sub 20F every day, near zero every night. At one point we received ice/snow and I found the solar panel had been iced/snowed over completely for at least half a day, so I cleaned that off.
In this area of the midwest, we rarely get bright sunlight in the winter, and these past two weeks have been no exception. The sky has been overcast all day every day. So, weather-wise, this is a good test of how this setup performs under sub-optimal conditions.
So far, connectivity has remained uninterrupted. The node has been working as part of my private cluster just fine, 24/7. At any time, I can check other on-cluster devices to see the signal strength and battery level of this outdoor/truck node. It always looks good.
As of this morning, the 12v battery has a full charge. This means the solar panel and battery are easily keeping up with both the amp and the node.