I’m looking to build a small monitoring module (rain sensor) that I could leave outside full time.
Would anybody know about a kit that would include a solar panel and a battery (or capacitor? ) to drive a ezlopi 24/7 ?
EzloPi is based on the ESP32, which is not really a low-power platform for IoT. You would be much better off using a battery powered z-wave or zigbee based sensor.
If you really want to deploy an EzloPi based solution, I would start by googling for ‘solar powered esp32’, there are numerous schematics and examples to be found.
Funny you should mention that.
We have built a Low Power version of EzloPi with full recharging circuitry that includes things like solar panels.
it should go live on ezlopi.com soon.
just need to add this board…connect to EzloPi as a power source. (Full project will be coming soon)
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805468108310.html
Also: we’ll have the ability to dynamically adjust both sampling frequency and reporting frequency to save power.
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That is CRAZY nice !!!
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Yes I was thinking the same also. Will be good for the user to decide the sensor(s) sampling rates and reporting intervals back to the Ezlo cloud.
Know I’ve had issues with USB powered EzloPi devices like multiple Humidity sensors on one ESP board that were reporting value changes far too often and far too frequently back to the Ezlo cloud and that was flooding my system and causing issues slowing down my system like in the dynamic dashboard tiles.
The devs have been working to reduce these issues and the number of “broadcasts” such EzloPi sensors were producing, but also allowing users to set such parameters is even better.
This would also assist and aid in any such battery / solar implementations also.
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As with anything creating something new is generally an evolution so the fact the stock ESP32 isn’t ideal isn’t a blocker in my mind. Create the functionality, then optimize the hardware platform and software in parallel with some users involved to broaden the use case. You can’t argue with the availability and price point of ESP32 modules for this type of prototyping.
Good start in my mind.
It is too bad quantities are limited to 1 on AliExpress for now.
The product details doesn’t indicate the specs required for the solar panel and battery. Would you have that information somewhere ?
we are building the project and will give full details on ezlopi soon.
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