{"id":7877,"date":"2012-09-22T09:54:43","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T13:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=7877"},"modified":"2012-09-22T09:54:43","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T13:54:43","slug":"sort-of-solar-powered-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/22\/sort-of-solar-powered-raspberry-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"(sort-of) Solar Powered Raspberry Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One day, I&#8217;d like to power a small remote server from solar power. Today is not yet that day. But I&#8217;m closer &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>At the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.solarpowerinternational.com\/\">Solar Power International<\/a> show (<em>big modules! cheap modules! AC modules!!<\/em>) last week in Orlando (<em>squee-able minilizards! cuban food!!<\/em>) there were a few vendors selling solar USB chargers. Most were folding thin-film units similar to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powerfilmsolar.com\/products\/foldable-portable-remote\/usb-aa\">this<\/a>, but what caught my eye (and was actually for sale at the show) was the <a href=\"http:\/\/lstechn.com\/\">LSTech<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lstechn.com\/gnuboard4.utf8\/bbs\/solar_charger.php\">Smart one<\/a>&#8220;: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lstechn.com\/gnuboard4.utf8\/bbs\/solar_charger.php\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-7878\" title=\"solar_charger_bg\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/solar_charger_bg-320x121.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"121\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/solar_charger_bg-320x121.jpg 320w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/solar_charger_bg-160x60.jpg 160w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/solar_charger_bg-500x189.jpg 500w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/solar_charger_bg.jpg 740w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/a>The unit features:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2\u00c3\u2014 3.5 Ah 3.7 V Li-Poly batteries<\/li>\n<li>a 4W 5V solar panel inside the clamshell case<\/li>\n<li>a 1A USB output<\/li>\n<li>a USB Micro-B charging input and auxiliary solar panel input<\/li>\n<li>two ah-oww, make-it-stop bright LED <del>interrogation<\/del> reading lights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It comes with a couple of USB cables, and like seemingly all Korean semi-luxe electronic devices, comes in a soft brown velour bag. I&#8217;m not sure if the soft velour bag is the universal sign of quality in Korea, but I&#8217;ve noticed it enough that it might be A Thing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve run a Raspberry Pi for a couple of hours off this thing without making too much of a dent in the charge. I might be able to run it in full sun from the 4W solar charger, but I&#8217;m under no illusion that the Raspberry Pi&#8217;s ~3.5W continuous draw is going to keep running from such a small panel. That&#8217;s expecting an 88% capacity factor from a solar panel, which would be well if there wasn&#8217;t this small thing called night (or rotation of the earth, or cloud cover, or &#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One day, I&#8217;d like to power a small remote server from solar power. Today is not yet that day. But I&#8217;m closer &#8230; At the Solar Power International show (big modules! cheap modules! AC modules!!) last week in Orlando (squee-able minilizards! cuban food!!) there were a few vendors selling solar USB chargers. Most were folding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[2510,1547],"class_list":["post-7877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-raspberrypi","tag-solar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-233","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7877"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7881,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877\/revisions\/7881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}