Check out pcengines or soekeris as well for a combo router/3g modem. Some of the versions come with embedded 3g modems. I use pcengines to run my firewall and have purchased from http://www.mini-box.com. Check that site out to get some ideas of a bundled communication system.
Check out pcengines or soekeris as well for a combo router/3g modem. Some of the versions come with embedded 3g modems. I use pcengines to run my firewall and have purchased from http://www.mini-box.com. Check that site out to get some ideas of a bundled communication system.
If you can combine everything into one board, you won't need a switch or the rpi. Just run linux on the device with a read-only non-persistent filesystem. It can be your router/switch/3g modem. You will need to be conscious of power used, but it's worth looking into. Amazon has minipci 3g modems that would fit nicely onto one of those low power pcengines boards.
Or for that matter, use a 3g usb modem on the rpi and just plug the camera directly into it. Have it act as a router for you. No need for a switch.
Or for that matter, use a 3g usb modem on the rpi and just plug the camera directly into it. Have it act as a router for you. No need for a switch.
VPNs are fine for almost every application with the exception of this. Now, you could do some things on each end to eliminate the broadcasts and reduce keepalives etc, however it just requires tinkering and lots of it.
Everyone has their favorite "combo boards" but really you have 50% of what you need already. Just get a TL-WR802N or something and away you go. The 3G/4G modem you have already has routing built in and will power on with USB connection which is key. It's also a stable unit for this application.
You won't be able to port forward, which is why I said this gets tricky. It's again based on how cell companies hand out IP addresses... they aren't IP addresses that can be visible to the 'outside' despite looking like they're in the right class. Your 3G/4G router will have port forwarding options in its admin menu but don't get your hopes up
You won't be able to connect this to a remote BI server in any productive way to see live stream. There are two methods:
1.) Rely on the cam's "cloud" connection. It's chatty, and I've personally not had much experience with them, but it is an option for some cameras. The streams do not initiate until you log into a website and queue up the camera. You'd have to negotiate bitrates on the camera or look at sub-stream in order to keep your connection happy. Too much data means a significant live lag over cell.
2.) BI server sits locally. I don't bring this up often to other techs because they start swarming me with "BUT WHAT ABOUT--" and "YOU CAN'T DO THIS" comments, but after many successful installs, I don't care. It works. And can work well with solar. Trick is finding a PC that runs on 2-5W with BI running. Which they exist. The Windows based pc will allow you to set up a non-chatty VPN proxy and away you go. You can then bypass the camera's motion detection, FTP, e-mail, etc settings and also allow you to do all the fun things you want. The major trick here is ALL OF THE FACTORS that you have to tune and be aware of that will give you headaches. If you have the time to do all of that, it's worth it.
Here's what my installs look like size wise to give you an idea of what would sit on the tower (minus batteries and panel, of course )
https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/12780-4G-LTE-setup
Everyone has their favorite "combo boards" but really you have 50% of what you need already. Just get a TL-WR802N or something and away you go. The 3G/4G modem you have already has routing built in and will power on with USB connection which is key. It's also a stable unit for this application.
You won't be able to port forward, which is why I said this gets tricky. It's again based on how cell companies hand out IP addresses... they aren't IP addresses that can be visible to the 'outside' despite looking like they're in the right class. Your 3G/4G router will have port forwarding options in its admin menu but don't get your hopes up
You won't be able to connect this to a remote BI server in any productive way to see live stream. There are two methods:
1.) Rely on the cam's "cloud" connection. It's chatty, and I've personally not had much experience with them, but it is an option for some cameras. The streams do not initiate until you log into a website and queue up the camera. You'd have to negotiate bitrates on the camera or look at sub-stream in order to keep your connection happy. Too much data means a significant live lag over cell.
2.) BI server sits locally. I don't bring this up often to other techs because they start swarming me with "BUT WHAT ABOUT--" and "YOU CAN'T DO THIS" comments, but after many successful installs, I don't care. It works. And can work well with solar. Trick is finding a PC that runs on 2-5W with BI running. Which they exist. The Windows based pc will allow you to set up a non-chatty VPN proxy and away you go. You can then bypass the camera's motion detection, FTP, e-mail, etc settings and also allow you to do all the fun things you want. The major trick here is ALL OF THE FACTORS that you have to tune and be aware of that will give you headaches. If you have the time to do all of that, it's worth it.
Here's what my installs look like size wise to give you an idea of what would sit on the tower (minus batteries and panel, of course
)https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/12780-4G-LTE-setup
Q™
IPCT Contributor
You mean the star picket?
If so thats an attempt to create a good ground for the tower in case of lightning. Its connected to the "frame ground" of the switch. I'm not an electrician, so i'm not sure how effective it would be.
We're on a farm here
Not very. It depends a lot on how conductive your soil is. The general go-to these days is a copper plated steel rod because nobody outlays for copper rods anymore. In the case the soil isn't that conductive you'll want to pack the rod with salt to increase the conductivity. You absolutely want the copper plating in that case as a star picket packed with salt will last long enough for you to get out the gate, get home and crack a beer before it corrodes away.
Also, you want to bond the rod to the tower using *thick* cable or copper strap. The tower will provide a nice chassis to divert stray EMF around your gear. Of course a direct hit and all bets are off. I've seen 1" wide copper strap vaporised.
The trick is to get the lightning to go around your gear rather than through it. I'm working on a place up North in WA that takes fairly regular hits and wasn't designed properly. There are about 300 surge diverters around the perimeter that need to be tested and/or replaced after each big bang and we've been working on earthing, finials and diversion this week so it's all fresh
The consultant who designed the lightning protection told the client the diverters were good for 15 years. He just forgot to mention that's 15 years or one lightning strike, whichever comes first.
dalepa
Moderator
I would have put you in Northern New South Wales (based on the Black on Yellow Number plates on the Camry) with those temps but that latitude puts you down south.
Re your battery / panel capacity it might be worth charging the battery to full charge and seeing how you go. Starting with a dead battery and waiting for the solar to bring it up will not give you the most accurate indicator of performance this early on.
Not sure what you are monitoring but do you need unflappable 24/7 performance or is having it go down for a few hours after a couple of cloudy days acceptable? It's a lot cheaper in terms of batteries / panels if you can afford to lose the cameras every now and again. Here in Sydney, Parramatta Council deploys solar powered mobile 3G units and they go down at night after two or three cloudy days.
Also remember that if you run lead acid batteries below about 50% depth of discharge on a regular basis you will kill them fairly quickly. It can be cheaper to buy more / bigger batteries and replace them less often.
Great set up though. I've always wanted to do a solar camera as a project but I can't justify it at present as I can run cable/poe/240V to everything I want to monitor.
How much did it set you back?
Maybe saying regular 45 degree days is incorrect! regular >40 for sure though.
Out of curiosity I looked it up -
last summer we had 5 days >40 degrees, with the 13th of Jan being the hottest with 43.9 degrees. This is from an official weather station. Temp readings on the verandah (not as much airflow) were higher than that!
in the 2013/2014 summer there were 15 days above 40 degrees (max 43.5). There was also a 46 degree day recorded in 2009. It gets hotter than the coast this far inland.
Pretty easy to look up daily temps http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml
Currently working on the panels/batteries. Needed to make some modifications. Will post an update when done.
roughly 2.5k
Out of curiosity I looked it up -
last summer we had 5 days >40 degrees, with the 13th of Jan being the hottest with 43.9 degrees. This is from an official weather station. Temp readings on the verandah (not as much airflow) were higher than that!
in the 2013/2014 summer there were 15 days above 40 degrees (max 43.5). There was also a 46 degree day recorded in 2009. It gets hotter than the coast this far inland.
Pretty easy to look up daily temps http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml
Currently working on the panels/batteries. Needed to make some modifications. Will post an update when done.
roughly 2.5k
Zeddy
Getting the hang of it
- Jun 19, 2016
- 92
- 42
VPNs are fine for almost every application with the exception of this. Now, you could do some things on each end to eliminate the broadcasts and reduce keepalives etc, however it just requires tinkering and lots of it.
Everyone has their favorite "combo boards" but really you have 50% of what you need already. Just get a TL-WR802N or something and away you go. The 3G/4G modem you have already has routing built in and will power on with USB connection which is key. It's also a stable unit for this application.
You won't be able to port forward, which is why I said this gets tricky. It's again based on how cell companies hand out IP addresses... they aren't IP addresses that can be visible to the 'outside' despite looking like they're in the right class. Your 3G/4G router will have port forwarding options in its admin menu but don't get your hopes up
Telstra used to offer a "telstra.extranet" option that allowed you to get a public IP address, but it seems they've stopped doing it now unless you buy some $500 a month plan. We're going thru the same issue currently at our flying club, the next best thing we've found is NBN satellite, but not sure if it'll get approved.
Yeah i'm on nbn satellite here. You can get a static ip for that for $5/month. But i'm using a dynamic ip updater app instead. Works fine for streaming from BI webserver even though satellite is a 600ms ping.
What sort of flying are you doing?
Really, they stopped you getting a proper public IP? Damn. I was using 3g as my main connection very recently (couple of months ago) and it worked fine.
In this situation, as far as i can theorize it, having a public IP shouldn't matter if your VPN client is making an outbound connection.
as far as an update to this project, i had some issues getting batteries and panels but i've got some more gear now.
Was also distracted by installing a smaller tower down the paddock. Need some time to put in the new charge controller and batteries and arduino and code the weather station (only partially working) and well lots of stuff.
Oh and yeah gotta get some mowing done now!
Nice setup. I have been interested in setting up a wireless camera with solar/battery bank, but there just hasn't been a need for it.....yet.