Let’s get right to it. In November we decided to use solar power to monitor a new condo development across the street from our office. Some of us wanted to see what goes into building condos that are about a zillion dollars each. Some of us have very short attention spans and in order to help other people who suffer from the same ailment, decided to use our solar prowess to compress months worth of activity into mere minutes. Joking aside, this project was actually sparked by our customers and their questions about product operation in wintry conditions.
In the past couple years we’ve seen a lot of people using our solar products on GoPro cameras in virtually unattended and/or extreme weather situations. We figured a New York winter would be be a great time to experiment with this. We set three goals:
- Explore how our our products could be used for stuff like solar powered trail cams, semi-unattended time lapse applications, and situations where it’s impractical or impossible to access the battery or camera for a month at a time or more.
- Get a better idea of how this type of setup behaves in cold and freezing conditions.
- Not have the enclosure fall seven stories on someone or something below (granted, this probably should’ve been goal number one).
It was a clear Fall day in Brooklyn when we made our way up to the roof to install the system. The setup consisted of a Voltaic 3.4 watt center hole solar panel, pole mount clamp, a V15 battery, GoPro Hero2 camera (32gb SD card) with a Cam-Do intervalometer and a Cam-Do outdoor enclosure… and a piece of wood we got from the weird hardware store down the block.
If our job was to create the ugliest installation, yet keep the panel locked toward the sun while keeping the enclosure from falling from a seven story building… then we succeeded.
We ran the system for 68 days, interacting with it only four times to check the charge level of the camera, battery, and to download the time-lapse videos to get a feel of the progress. We set the intervelometer to take a photo every 20 (1/20/14 – corrected) 10 minutes, 24 hours a day. We agree that this is a little bit excessive but figured we should try to tax the system.
The weather was generally cloudy or hazy with only 14 clear days out of 68. The average high was around 45°F / 7.5°C with an average low of about 33°F / 0°C. The temperature bottomed out at 4°F / -15.6°C on the night of 1/7/14 and about 46 days had freezing temperatures at some point during the day. If you want further details you can grab our weather log in .pdf format here.
After we took the setup down we analyzed the photo times and dates which showed all were accounted for, meaning that between the camera and battery there was always enough reserve power for our intended operation. NOTE: We did not top up the battery with an external source at any point during those 68 days. However, the camera was plugged into a USB port on our computer just long enough to extract the data each time, probably 30 minutes total over 68 days.
The only downside of our experiment was the wholly unexciting final video. We likened it to watching paint dry or grass grow because the contractor didn’t make much visible progress–probably because of the crummy weather. We plan on setting up the same solar GoPro system once the project starts ramping up so we can follow it through completion.
Until then we hope that our data can help you if you’re designing a similar project, in similar conditions. It should give you a pretty good idea of how our equipment functions and what you can expect out of it. As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop us a line.
Do you have a log of how full the voltaic battery was at different times? Was it ever half or only a quarter full due to cloudy days?
Hi Marcus,
We don’t have a log of the battery capacity. From memory, most of the times we went up there I remember seeing 3 lights. It was a pretty nasty, overcast winter, but the panel was on the roof and had very little obstruction except for one building for about an hour a day and the Manhattan Bridge at the very end of the day.
This is an awesome post!
I am trying to decide which one to add on – the intervalometer or programmable scheduler. Our shoot is of a bridge installation so we don’t need night time shots but the GoPro only allows for 60 second shots as the longest time interval which is overkill for what I need.
I didn’t see the “Voltaic 3.4 watt center hole solar panel” on their site. They are only showing the 4 watt solar charging kit. Will that suffice? Not sure how to mount it. Does the Cam-Do enclosure house the V15 battery AND the GoPro? Sorry for so many questions but I couldn’t tell from your photos.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
I find the the intervalometer a bit easier to program but it also means you’re taking nighttime shots that you might have to edit out later.
The 4 Watts should be fine. The enclosure holds the V15 and the GoPro.
Jeff
Hey Julia,
Glad you liked it.
I’ve used both IV and PS and the IV’s learning curve is definitely smaller, but the PS’s more convenient if you can get it dialed in–and you don’t want to have to go through and purge the night shots manually (or write a script to automatically delete files between certain times).
If you take photos, rather than video, you can stitch them together for the same effect using a lot less space on the card.
The GPH2’s 5mp wide photos end up around 2.5-3mb ea and the 11mp wide end up at about 5-6mb ea. With a 32GB card, taking 11mp/w photos every 10 minutes (24 hours a day) you can take about 37 day’s worth of photos before you have to replace the card. You can double those days by using the 5mp/w.
You’re right, we don’t have the center hole panel up on the site–eeeeep! We’re about to launch a new site that’s–technically speaking–one million times better. In the interim if you’re trying to get your hands on the center hole panel ASAP you can just order a 3.5 kit (https://www.voltaicsystems.com/3wattkit.php) and note you want a center hole panel.
Like Jeff mentioned, the enclosure will hold the V15, GP and there’s probably even enough space for some jelly beans.
If you have any more questions, give us a shout.
Daniel
Weird hardware stores are hard to come by. Cherish yours.
Why does the shadow motion switch direction at the 35 second mark?
Nice proof of concept.
Hey Ben,
I agree about the hardware stores, the weirder the better.
The shadow… I’m not sure exactly. I read this comment and watched the video and I saw it too.
First thing I did was check the file dates from the Nov 20th until the 26th again to make sure I didn’t miss anything. They were all accounted for. In my original post it said 20 minutes apart, but it was actually only 10 min–I corrected the post.
Then I went through frame by frame. What I’m guessing happened, by looking at the contextual clues (cars, position of equipment on the site, etc.) is that when I was removing the night frames I took out one extra that appeared too dim in the thumbnail. When I did this the transition from day to day wasn’t apparent so it looked like it was simply jumping back within the same day. The last frame, before it appears to jump back to the beginning of a new day around 07:15-07:30, was at about 16:15 with the sun set that day around 16:30 so the last clip would’ve been dim as the sun was already behind the Manhattan Bridge.
Unfortunately the GPH2 doesn’t have a time stamp overlay option so I’ll probably add it manually next time. If you have any other questions, holler.
Even if the final video didn’t quite live up to your expectations, you did prove that solar power works quite well for surveillance cameras and the like. Even with mostly cloudy days, there was enough for the camera to run. I’d like to see this applied in other ways.