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RESEARCH 》 Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi

Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi

When you choose to use your Raspberry Pi device as your IoT based remote weather station or if you are building Linux kernel (like kernel compilation) within the same, you need a good uninterrupted power source (UPS). But if you are using it on site or in some research camping location you can choose to power your Raspberry Pi device with your custom off-grid solar power source.

You can choose to use a small 12 Volt 10-14watt solar panel like this. This is quite ideal for charging a standard 12 volt - 7.2Ah Lead-acid battery. And while charging it will have sufficient to current left to power your Raspberry Pi device.
Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi

You can charge your battery via a solar panel to battery charge controller as shown below. The voltage output of these charge controllers should be around 13.5 to 14.5 volts which is ideal to charge your 12v battery. This will also ensure that the battery is never overcharged and will trickle charge if the battery is fully charged. The solar panel which is rated 12volts will generate around 18 to 19 volts in peak sunlight. So it is never a good idea to control the solar panel directly to a battery without a charge controller.
Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi - solar battery charge controller

Here is my compact low power UPS. This is a general purpose CFL/LED UPS with few power sockets (in this case 220volts AC). The advantage of this UPS is that it is meant to be used continuously 24/7 unlike high-power standard 600VA UPS (such as your APC UPS). The high-power UPS beeps if there is a power failure and a micro-controller restricts charging the battery via external charging units. This low power UPS delivers 45-50VA power output which is ideal to power Raspberry Pi, a small LED monitor, and charge your mobile devices. It dissipates less heat which is what we need in this case. It case without battery installed. So I need to purchase a standard 12volt sealed maintenance free (SMF) 7.2Ah lead-acid battery and installed the same within it.

Sometimes these are also called as Mini-UPS, and sometimes as LED UPS. These are mainly meant to serve as emergency power-backup (as an emergency lamp) and besides you can also charge your Mobile Phones, Tablets, etc. However they are not suited for a Laptop. Since a laptop charger typically consume 95-110W AC when it charges the laptop. And in normal operating mode, it consumes around 35-50W AC. And for the same reason it is well suited for powering your Raspberry Pi device. If you have a standard 120/240v AC to 5v 2Amp DC power adapter you can use with this UPS to power your Raspberry Pi.

The truth is sometimes it is better to call this device as a mini Inverter than a UPS.
Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi - low power CFL or LED UPS

You can see various power outlets/sockets of the UPS along with an 1-Amp protection fuse.
Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi - low power CFL or LED UPS power socket

Backside of the UPS as you can see in the picture below. I hacked the same and connected its battery terminals internally to this power socket. Which this I can directly bypass the UPS, charge the battery when in need via my solar panel or draw power 12volts directly from the battery terminals. It is quite unsafe to use this socket since you can connect reverse polarity, so alternatively you can use safe Molex 12v 5v computer power connectors or a standard DC power jack for this purpose.
Off-Grid Solar Power System for Raspberry Pi - low power CFL or LED UPS battery socket

So with this setup you can power-up your Raspberry Pi via standard 110v/220v 5volts 2amp power-supply. Or you can use directly 12volts to 5volts 2amp Car USB power adapter. Alternatively you can build a 5volt 2Amp Raspberry Pi power supply adapter with LM78S05 voltage regulator. You can find the circuit and instructions HERE.

WARNING: Never use any untested car 5v USB power supply since it may not deliver the required 2Amp current. Since these adapters are mainly meant for charging your low-power mobile phones.

WARNING: Never build a 5volt power supply adapter with LM7805 voltage regulator, since it delivers just 1Amp maximum current.

Just for thought: In Bangalore (India), the government insists home owners to install these Solar Water Heaters on their terrace. They provide subsidy and moreover these days it is becoming a mandatory requirement for new home owners before they apply for new home utility power connection(s) to their home(s).
Bangalore India - Solar Water Heaters installed on a terrace

These Solar water heating units are incredibly efficient as they convert the solar power directly into heat. They contain heat exchangers inside these large heat insulated reservoirs where the heated water is stored or later use in the home. Unlike a solar based electricity generation process, a solar based heating system is lot more efficient. The amount of power loss during the process is way too less. And the heat (energy) stored in this system is efficient than the way energy stored in a battery in the form of chemical energy. Which is why we need better power (electricity) storage systems such as super-capacitors and so on.
Bangalore India - Solar Water Heaters installed on a terrace

Here is my live detailed video-log of the same:

Power Consumption of Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi consumes way too less power. However it is important to understand the power consumption of the same with respect to the load on the device, such as casual browsing, kernel compilation, etc. Hence I connected a Raspberry Pi device via my Kill-a-watt kind of kilowatt power meter as shown below and measured its power consumption parameters. This I did along with my other lab equipment and published the same as a complete detailed article HERE.
Power consumption of my Home Lab devices for research - Raspberry Pi

💎 TOFFEE-MOCHA new bootable ISO: Download
💎 TOFFEE Data-Center Big picture and Overview: Download PDF


Tópicos recomendados:

WAN Optimization iPhone and Android - Mobile App ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

Off-Grid Home Lab Research Solar Installation ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

PiPG - Raspberry Pi Network Packet Generator ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
PiPG is a powerful and yet simple Raspberry Pi Network Packet Generator. With PiPG you can now fabricate custom network packets and send via any Network Interface. Supports all kinds of standard Network Ports (Linux Kernel driver generated) such as Physical Network Interface ports, and an array of virtual ports such as loopback, tun/tap, bridge, etc. indispensable tool for: Network Debugging, Testing and Performance analysis Network Administrators Students Network R&D Protocol Analysis and Study Network Software Development Compliance Testing Ethical Hackers you can generate the following test traffic: L2-Bridging/Slow protocols: STP, LACP, OAM, LLDP, EAP, etc Routing protocols: RIPv1, RIPv2, IGMPv1, IGMPv2, OSPF, IS-IS, EIGRP, HSRP, VRRP, etc Proprietary protocols: CISCO, etc Generic: IPv4 TCP/UDP, etc Malformed random packets

TEST CASES :: TEST RESULTS :: Raspberry Pi WAN Emulator TOFFEE-Mocha-1.0.14-1-rpi2 ↗
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TOFFEE-DataCenter as a VNF for NFV ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

Demo TOFFEE-DataCenter WAN Optimization packaging feature ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021



Introducing TOFFEE-DataCenter ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
TOFFEE TOFFEE Data-Center is specifically meant for Data Center, Cluster Computing, HPC applications. TOFFEE is built in Linux Kernel core. This makes it inflexible to adapt according to the hardware configuration. It does sequential packet processing and does not scale up well in large multi-core CPU based systems (such as Intel Xeon servers, Core i7 Extreme Desktop systems,etc). Apart from this since it is kernel based, if there is an issue in kernel, it may crash entire system. This becomes a challenge for any carrier grade equipment (CGE) hardware build.

The TOFFEE Project :: TOFFEE-DataCenter :: WAN Optimization ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
The TOFFEE Project :: TOFFEE-DataCenter :: Linux Open-Source WAN Optimization

TOFFEE (and TOFFEE-DataCenter) deployment with VPN devices ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
In case if you need to deploy TOFFEE along with your existing VPN devices you can deploy the same as shown below. This will allow your VPN devices to encrypt your TOFFEE WAN Optimized network data. NOTE: Make sure about the VPN deployment topology done in the right order. Else TOFFEE (LAN side) may get VPN encrypted packets which may not be possible (and or difficult) to further optimize. Hence always make sure to deploy them in a topology suggested below so that TOFFEE devices are out of VPN tunnel.

TOFFEE deployment topology guide ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Assume you have two sites (such as Site-A and Site-B) connected via slow/critical WAN link as shown below. You can optimize this link by saving the bandwidth as well possibly improve the speed. However, the WAN speed can be optimized only if the WAN link speeds are below that of the processing latency of your TOFFEE installed hardware. Assume your WAN link is 12Mbps, and assume the maximum WAN optimization speed/capacity of Raspberry Pi is 20Mbps, then your link will get speed optimization too. And in another case, assume your WAN link is 50Mbps, then using the Raspberry Pi as WAN Optimization device will actually increase the latency (i.e slows the WAN link). But in all the cases the bandwidth savings should be the same irrespective of the WAN link speed. In other words, if you want to cut down the WAN link costs via this WAN Optimization set up, you can always get it since it reduces the overall bandwidth in almost all the cases (including encrypted and pre-compressed data).



Featured Educational Video:
Assista no Youtube - [17357//1] 294 - VRF - Virtual Routing and Forwarding - Introduction ↗

TOFFEE (and TOFFEE-DataCenter) optimized Mobile Wireless Backhaul Networks ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
TOFFEE can be used to optimize expensive Wireless backhaul network infrastructure. TOFFEE can be deployed over existing slow or often outdated old backhaul networks too. This will leverage mobile ISPs and network service providers to reduce their bulk IT CapEx and OpEx Costs.

Network Latency and Bandwidth Assessment - for Network Admins and Infrastructure Architects ↗
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Tracking Live TCP Sessions (connections) - WAN Optimization Device ↗
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TOFFEE-Butterscotch Documentation :: TOFFEE-Butterscotch-1.0.11-rpi2-23-nov-2016 ↗
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TOFFEE-Butterscotch Documentation :: TOFFEE-Butterscotch-1.0.11-rpi2-23-nov-2016




DIY TOFFEE WAN Optimization Device with Intel Celeron Mini PC ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Here is a step-by-step DIY to build your own Intel based Mini PC WAN Optimization Device with TOFFEE. I chose this below Intel Celeron Mini PC since it is fan-less aluminium case and as well it has 2 dedicated inbuilt Gigabit Ethernet ports. You can use one for LAN Network and one for WAN Network.



Research :: Optimization of network data (WAN Optimization) at various levels:
Network File level network data WAN Optimization


Learn Linux Systems Software and Kernel Programming:
Linux, Kernel, Networking and Systems-Software online classes


Hardware Compression and Decompression Accelerator Cards:
TOFFEE Architecture with Compression and Decompression Accelerator Card [CDN]


TOFFEE-DataCenter on a Dell Server - Intel Xeon E5645 CPU:
TOFFEE-DataCenter screenshots on a Dual CPU - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz - Dell Server