Side track

Being remote has always interested me. There are two parts to this:
A) The silence of surroundings allows the quiet of your mind to be heard. I often relish time on my own - to just think. Not about anything in particular, just to be alone. I enjoy the absence of 'noise' in the form of people, media, communication etc. I like being unreachable. Selfish I know, but I want to be able to contact the outside world when I want, not the other way around. I would be somewhat upset if my feeling of isolation, watching a beautiful sunset in silence was interrupted by a call or text. I've worked hard to leave all the digital noise behind!

B) Making the decision to break the silence with a remote voice, picture, video or text just blows my mind. It seems only natural that this interest would shine in my work and hobbies. Mobile phones, satellite phones, satellite messengers, radio - it all allows you to connect over distance. It has that same old world romance of receiving a letter from a far away place - just a bit quicker these days. The distance however remains unchanged. The comfort that comes from a familiar voice, a photo from home, or a thoughtful email makes the isolation so much more special.

It stands to reason I would be be interested in this trip!

I can remember a very old McDonald's commercial where a kid (about my age at the time) made a remote control car go and get him breakfast. The car was fitted with video and audio to allow it to drive by remote from the kid's bedroom. The car travelled through various terrain on it's journey - I have a vague recollection of a corrugated pipe it drove through. It goes without saying that I instantly wanted something like this, even though as a young child I wouldn't have the resources or skill to achieve it.

When I was starting high school, I developed software for such a machine, even sourced the motors for the wheels, but didn't have the capability to mount them, or make a frame. Now I can ;-)

I digress... now, I've always been fascinated with the idea of real-time connection to somewhere else - I was probably the first person to own a web camera in my town. I made a remote control robot arm out of Lego Technic which I could control over the Internet. The Wooooohoooo moment where I saw my dog walk past my bedroom door in realtime, 30KM away, sitting in a school classroom seems like small fries, but it was the concept that was proved! I loved the capability.

This brings me to this weekend's project... wait, maybe the last few weekends.
It all started when I bid on some electronic kits which could switch relays, read voltages, temperature, light levels etc. I won the auction and built one of the kits. It's awesome, works as planned, but there's no point controlling relays and reading temperatures of the room you're in, you need to be remote for it to be awesome! As a kind of, 'half way there' build of my awesome roaming machine, I decided to build a self-sufficient, solar powered web cam. Webcams are boring, sometimes I agree, but they are more interesting when they are on the side of a mountain, 50+KM from civilisation.

Yesterday I prepared the laptop, box and batteries (Thanks to Brett for picking me up a 40W solar panel)
Today I installed it all and gave it a test. I've included pictures of the build below:

It's intended destination is the Clyde Mountain. It's not a particularly good view, but it's accessible without people accidentally stumbling across it and stealing it. I'm particularly worried about someone stealing it or vandalising it. It's currently located locally for testing, until I work out any kinks. I suspect no one will ever see it in this position and it should get a good 8 hours of daylight.

As a bit of a false start, it's been running since maybe 5:30PM, and both the batteries had only 11.4V in them (technically flat). They managed to recover .2 of a volt before the sun went down. By nearly 8PM the batteries were below 11.5V. This is the low voltage cut out on the solar controller, so the laptop was only running on it's internal battery.
I logged in and shut the laptop down at about 8:30. The sad thing is, I actually need to manually restart it in  this scenario. I suspect intend to leave the setup running with no load all day to restore the batteries to full charge (a state these batteries have not been in for two years). I suspect they may be slightly damaged as a result of sitting idle, but we'll soon see. I'll take a walk past it tomorrow night, check the voltages, probably start it up and see if it lasts the night.

As for power usage, I've budgeted:
- 1.1 Amp average power usage of the laptop (2.5AH @ 12V)
- 200mA for the serial I/O controller
- 30mA for the solar controller/charger/regulator

This site provides a wealth of tools for working out solar loads, positions etc.
http://www.rpc.com.au/products/services/faq-info/calc/calculator.html
I've just redone the numbers, apparently I will need more capacity to get through winter - oh well, it's an experiment after all. My 1.1Amp reading was with the screen at full brightness, with it off it should be considerably lower.

I also need to cut a hole for the webcam. Laughable I know that a webcam can't actually see anything, but I suspected the lack of power would see be come back in a day or two anyway.