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I'm looking for a way to have an autonomous Raspberry Pi.

The idea is to have a Raspberry Pi outdoor, with a camera, + possible weather sensor and Wi-Fi mesh (I might looking for too much...)

Any idea of the requirement for make it autonomous (self powered by solar / wind)?

I have no idea of how much power I need for the battery to run it 24h in Ireland (pretty dark and cloudy...)

Peter Mortensen
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Kevin
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  • related: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/86/how-can-i-run-the-pi-on-solar-power – Fabian Mar 04 '18 at 12:00
  • Keep in mind that sizing the battery should take into account extended darkness/cloudyness/lack of light, making it big enough to last 48h would be a good first measure. – John Keates Mar 04 '18 at 15:33
  • There is a lot of statistics and data for sunshine, ex. https://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/sunshine.asp – MatsK Mar 05 '18 at 09:47
  • See https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/5033/how-much-energy-does-the-raspberry-pi-consume-in-a-day – Dmitry Grigoryev Mar 05 '18 at 14:21

1 Answers1

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It depends on how much current the Raspbery Pi consumes and that depends on:

  • Raspberry Pi version
  • What is running on the Raspberry Pi
  • Any add-on hardware

The theoretical approach is :

Power (watt) = U (voltage) x I (Current)

And for the battery: = Current x Hours = Amp/Hours

This is values from a specific setup, just here for reference. enter image description here

http://raspi.tv/2016/how-much-power-does-raspberry-pi3b-use-how-fast-is-it-compared-to-pi2b

I would recommend to meassure the power on your setup and calculate from that. And I would also recommend to search for "power conservation".

Some other references:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6050

https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

MatsK
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