Weather Ready Relay Node

Day 2. Tried to message the solar unit delivery unconfirmed. Broke open the case and checked the Nexus 6 bluetooth had shut off. I haven’t seen that happen in a while. But okay. Rebooted the phone and made sure bluetooth was back on. Restarted gotenna app and closed the case back up. Have been able to message the solar unit thus far. Been raining on and off today (finally!). Everything in the case was bone dry.

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Day 3 still raining today. Looked and saw the gotenna mesh blinking white light. Brought the case inside and the Nexus 6 gotenna app thought it was still connected to mesh. Restarted the app and the mesh stopped blinking and the app said connected. Put all back in the case. The battery pack is still holding 3 out of 4 lights of charge even with all the overcast weather we are having.

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The newer updates of Android, you may need to set goTenna app to NOT use the battery doze feature. Check this little video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYxZWBlSdBE

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That is right. I forgot about the battery optimizations. I’ve posted about them in the past. I’ll need to look at that and make sure they are set properly. There is the bluetooth service, bluetooth and midi and then gotenna app I have to make sure are all set.

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That appears to have been the issue. The Nexus 6 is staying connected to the gotenna mesh whereas before it was disconnecting.

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Glad to hear that was the fix! I know my phone updated recently, and I noticed that I was having a heck of a time keeping it connected to do the most recent firmware updates. After a little digging, I found that video and voila!

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Condensation inside the box. Not surprising with the swings in temperatures with the storms. Added silica gel desiccant packs (like the ones that come in a medicine/supplement pill bottle) to help keep the inside of the box dry.

Otherwise nothing new to report. Everything is still running 4 days in. If/when it ever does run out of battery power I’ll report then but with the 24,000 mAh solar battery pack it should be a long time from now.

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Solar node 2. Same 1060 Pelican case however this unit is a 15,000 mAh battery, smaller Samsung Galaxy S4 phone with the gotenna mesh and a silica gel desiccant. There is more room at the top with the smaller battery.

Solar node #1 is having some interesting issues. I saw today that gotenna was not paired (flashing white). Broke open the box and the Nexus 6 was showing 10% battery on the gotenna mesh but it was only flashing white with no red. Stopped the app. Restarted the app and immediately connected and showed 100% battery on the mesh. That was odd.

Picture of #2 hanging in the test environment (backyard).

IMG_20180802_164832

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Why not use DampRid packs inside the case to ensure that any moisture is absorbed by those, and not your sensitive electronics?

I’ve used these with great success in many applications. Airflow and drain holes (with grilles, so little multi-legged critters don’t crawl inside and call your new case “Home”) should work also.

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I have a bunch of the silica gel packets in hand. Will look into the DampRid packs as I haven’t heard of them before.

Do you have any ideas/photos on grilles? I’m debating putting in some mesh like that from a window screen but not sure how to do this and get air flow without letting water. I swear some of the storms I see the water is falling at really steep angles.

You can get plastic window screen at the big box. A little silicone around the edges will hold it. If a cable needs to pass through, you can cut a slot for it and use silicone to seal it to the cable.

On my cases designed for holding sensitive objects (like Pelican or Harbor Freight “Apache” cases I leave the foam in them. It presses up against the opening from the inside and is as fine as most screening you can get.

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I’ve moved both solar nodes into the house for now. Heat is a real problem with this setup especially if they get 5+ hours of direct sunlight like they did today. It was 110F in there based off the Nexus 6 temperature sensor. 85F outdoor temp. I’m going to have to figure out a way to draw out the hot air with some kind of venting without letting water in.

As it is the 24,000 mAh solar battery pack is flashing all lights so it is probably down to its last 24 hours of operation. 6 days running without electricity isn’t bad. Especially as one could use a car to recharge the battery pack to full power again for another 6 days of solar work.

Heat is a real problem with this setup especially if they get 5+ hours of direct sunlight like they did today. It was 110F in there based off the Nexus 6 temperature sensor.

Have you considered using a peltier cooler under the solar panels to keep the solar nodes cool? Alternately, you could use the heat created by the panels to drive a peltier which powers a small muffin-style fan to blow air across the nodes, keeping them cooler.

This is a very simplistic version, but should give you some ideas:

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Thanks I’ll look into this. I do have a number of box fans from my homebrew projects I haven’t used.

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With enough solar panelage, anything is possible. Power consumption on that might be - just guessing – 10x just the GTM?

What I’ve been doing is increasing the size of the case. The HF medium “Apache” seems to be nominal now, the small ones were just not big enough. I leave the foam insert in based on the fact that it takes heat to warm the air longer to work it’s way through that than through plain ol’ air. If the medium HF case isn’t big enough, get the large is my plan. However I use external panels, so don’t need the clear case.

Sorry if I missed it but I’m curious if you have tried omitting the phone or Bluetooth connected device? In my experience the GTM will still accept and relay messages fine although the light flashes as it is looking for a paired device. I haven’t tested it but I’m guessing this could save you the power consumption of the phone in your very nice project! My apologies if this was covered already!

I’ve put the weather relay nodes in my attic at the windows. With the solar panels pointing out the windows and with the rest of the box lid ajar I’m hoping the heat will not get to be too much. I’ve got the phones in the nodes to be able to positively confirm messages. I’ve not done any testing with the phones not connected.

With the phones attached people can ping the nodes to test their own GTM devices and at least get a positive response. But I can see that I can probably be much better off with just a solar panel and a GTM in relay mode that gets recharged during the day.

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You can still ping and message a node that is paired to a device even if the device isn’t currently paired to the GTM. The GTM will also send message confirmation even though the device is not currently connected via bluetooth. The GTM does consume a lot more power when it is seeking to pair to a device though so I’m not sure it’s worth it.

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Right. So my current solution with the mesh units in the attic is to keep the paired phone on the 2nd floor right below the GTM. This allows them to maintain the bluetooth connection to the GTM and not powered off the same battery pack as the GTM giving the GTM more battery life.