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Designing a Wireless Device that Lives Forever

posted by martyb on Thursday September 28 2017, @03:47PM   
from the plant-only-in-a-well-lit-area dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Running on Rays of Light and Off-the-Shelf Hardware

We have previously looked at how to make a wireless device live for years on one tiny coin cell battery. This time we up the game and make it live forever, using solar power and off-the-shelf hardware.

We build a prototype of our device and go through the technical details involved in designing for solar power. We use off-the-shelf hardware running the latest version of the Thingsquare ultra low-power software. Light does not provide a lot of power, so we need software that can make the most of it.

[...] There are many situations in which we would like a wireless network that lasts forever:

• Large-scale vineyard monitoring: keeping track of the vines that make up fine wines
• Checking up on those organic crops: believe it or not, agriculture is all about data
• Big city life: cities have parking spaces, trash cans, bus stops, trains and other urban necessities that need to be kept track of
• The great outdoors: knowing where cattle and livestock live their lives means farmers can save money

Sounds like a great project.

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Original Submission

• one aspect of a many one aspect of a many (Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday September 28 2017, @04:13PM (2 children)

  by crafoo (6639) on Thursday September 28 2017, @04:13PM (#574403)

  They should worry about moisture intrusion, proper draining, and environmental coatings for the electronic components. What is the expected useful life of the solar panel? What kind of power does it collect after you place it behind a protective cover and seal? 8% loss minimum due to Fresnel reflections. They'll probably use acrylic (polycarbonate if they're dumb) so real transmission is going to be around 88%, start of life. Decaying from their due to UV exposure, abrasion, dirt and dust.

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• Re:one aspect of a many (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 28 2017, @11:00PM

  by c0lo (156) on Thursday September 28 2017, @11:00PM (#574573) Journal

  They should worry about moisture intrusion, proper draining, and environmental coatings for the electronic components.

  It is called conformal coating [wikipedia.org]
  You can find them in spray cans [rs-online.com].

  What is the expected useful life of the solar panel?

  On the PV panels on my roof - 20 years.

  What kind of power does it collect after you place it behind a protective cover and seal?

  Or you can buy them framed and ready to mount outside [google.com]

  --
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• Re:one aspect of a many (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 28 2017, @11:17PM

  by frojack (1554) on Thursday September 28 2017, @11:17PM (#574579) Journal

  They should worry about utter exhaustion of the electronic spectrum.

  You do not need to track every parking space. They really don't go missing. They might be empty, (and that's not all bad).

  There is really NOT an inexhaustible supply of band width available for these trivial uses. Pretty soon all you do is raise the noise floor and everything has to shout out its "precious" data more loudly than before.

  Sure, you could power lots of these devices by harvesting wasted radio waves from broadcast stations or the millions other such devices screaming their data to nowhere and everywhere.

  Besides, there's no point in making primitive tech last forever. Have we learned nothing in the last 50 years?

  --
  No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.

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