solar powered Puck.js data logger for remote site

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  • I was wondering if anyone has used the Puck as a data logger with data stored to a micro SD card and hooked up to a solar panel for long term power. I need to be able to place these in remote sites for several months. I'd like to be able to walk up to the unit and using Bluetooth download the data stored on the SD card to an iPhone or Android phone via Bluetooth. Would this be possible? Has anyone done all or part of this before?

  • Well, it may happen if I can scale down this setup.
    I just received the puck.js and am examining how to create more place but keeping it's nice looks.
    In the case of solar power I am considering how to place females inside the case for power males (pins and sockets) and possible flash from something like the white battery/sun panel unit that is quiet cheap from china

    The middle board is realtime clock and SD Card with prototype area.
    One can get them a lot smaller and fit in the battery/sun panel unit and of course one can take the puck.js out of it's box and perhaps remove battery holder for flatness.

    If nRF52 is important, and quantity known, there are discussions on a possible flat pcb for nRF52

    Do you know how big the flash has to be? can something a bit less than 1MByte be enough???

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  • Yes, you could do that - you'd have to solder to some of the on-board pads (not just the 0.1") to get enough pins to connect to the SD card though I think - and the SD cards actually draw quite a bit of power if I recall so you might need to swap to external power.

    You could look at using one of the original Espruino boards: http://www.espruino.com/EspruinoBoard

    Those have the circuitry to allow them to be powered from LiPo batteries, they have a micro SD card slot, and place to solder a Bluetooth module on too.

    The Bluetooth won't be the same - the usual one to use is the HC-05 or HC-06. They're classic Bluetooth UART devices which won't work on iPhone, but do work really well with Android, Mac, PC, etc. They also draw quite a bit more power (30mA) but there are some things you can do to reduce that, and you might be able to send a command to turn it off apart from when a button was pressed.

    Even so if you were powering it off a ~150mA solar panel I imagine you'd have bags of free power to keep Bluetooth active.

  • Also, you can add the HM-10 module which is Bluetooth low energy - but it's a lot more difficult to use than Bluetooth LE on Puck.js

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solar powered Puck.js data logger for remote site

Posted by Avatar for Seneca @Seneca

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