Off Grid Solar Powered WiFi Mesh and Camera station, Part 1

[@RichmondLakeTravels]

Great video! Bought all but the cctv stuff as I have a different need. Question on wire guages... What did u build yours with?

[@StevenYoungcaptual]

Love your videos. Flew my plane over your head the other day. Looks like fun projects👍 Keep the videos coming!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thank you for watching! Safe flying, too!

[@MitchellEarl]

Your information is laid out in a way that makes the idea of doing this more feasible. I was thinking to save power, you could source a pair of the older AC mesh and with the addon directional antennas, you could tune the power way down and still have a good connection; or if you don't need wifi at the entennas, you could use a couple of Nanostation AC Locos.

[@harrier113]

Great videos! What is the brand/size of the white wires you used for the harness'? Thanks!

[@inspiredscreens]

Hello from the Philippines! I really enjoyed your video(s). I spent a number of years in Lake Havasu City and Parker, AZ and often drove through Joshua Tree to Los Angeles. So cool to see your vids. Thank you.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Glad you enjoyed em!

[@kevinholland4156]

Amperes Time which is the new L I Time has a heated battery. I just bought a SOK heated battery. They heat first from the solar panels and then charge up the battery. Good investment for the chance of below-temperature charging. your recommendation on Victron is spot on. They in my honest opinion are the best.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

yeah, for sure heated is the way to go here and SOK makes good stuff! I actually bought this battery a while ago (under the old name) when I was putting it to use indoors. So it may not work great outdoors, but figure I'll give it a try first! Thanks for watching and commenting!

[@Equinox601]

Thanks for the video. Your channel will take off soon. Keep at it. Great work.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thank you! Glad you appreciated it.

[@visualcontrast]

I bet a Flex Aware on the outside of that shipping container would be helpful too. I have a few that I use. (It's like a contact sensor but battery powered + cellular connection.)

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Yes for sure! I have some solutions like that deployed all around 😉

[@jkrahulec]

I built a very similar solar station (added a NanoStation 5AC loco to enable a greater distance) but the system powers itself down in less than 24 hours of uptime. Can you provide more details regarding your specific configuration? - How did you connect the Solar panels; serial or parallel? - Any special configurations set in the Victron controller? - Any special configurations set in the Unifi Flex switch? - What gauge wire did you use for the various connections?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

- Series (whenever possible I'd rather have lower current on wires and subsequently less heat and voltage drop) - YES, will return to this at the end. - No config at all on the unifi switch BUT it's actually not capable of driving 2 of my cameras and a unifi 6 mesh antenna, so one of those has another POE injector driving it from DC (another Tycon, but a smaller one). - I think 10AWG for the battery to the Victron and 10AWG for the panels to the Victon and something like 14AWG for the POE injector(s) but I could be wrong. Please do the math and choose the right gauge for you! Okay, back to Victron. For me I noticed something weird. My remote station would power down every day for a few hours but when I looked at the Victron logs, it was always when the battery was actually fully CHARGED, not discharged. And I noticed when it all shut down, the light on the Tycon was another color (red, I think). I ended up figuring out that even though the Tycon is SUPPOSED to work up to 15v, it actually shuts down from high voltage somewhere around 14.5v. Which meant it was shutting down just before the victron stopped topping off the lithium battery. To solve this I just changed the top voltage the victron will charge the battery to (I think they call it absorption) from something like 14.6 to something like 14.3 and I've never had this problem again! If you built exactly my system, this may be your problem. But obviously your's could just be shutting down for any other reason. Let me know!

[@jkrahulec]

Can you share the link for the smaller POE injector, and/or if you've already identified a larger POE injector that can handle the full load needed by the UniFi Flex and 3 devices, I'd appreciate it. So, my system won't charge higher than 13.4v. It hits a clear ceiling and I'm not sure where it's being limited. I've tried several options but in order to reduce the variables, I have now reset the MPPT back to the factory config, only changing the Battery preset to Smart Lithium (LiFePO4), and I set Load output to Always Off so the system only charges. - I assume you are using the same Battery preset option, correct? If not, which preset and with which configs? - Which Operation mode do you use, BatteryLife, Automatic Energy Selector (AES), or something else? I really appreciate you researching and sharing your work on this subject. @@LetsOverthinkThis

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@jkrahulec unfortunately I'm not on my land so I can't look at my settings, though I don't think I played much with the voltages other than what I already mentioned. That said, we're missing a lot of useful troubleshooting info from you. The main benefit of the victron is the logs and graphs of all sorts of useful info. What does it say is happening when you hit that 13.4v mark? IE what charging mode is it in? And what is your solar input voltage? The victron can't/won't charge higher than what it's being given and I think the max is actually a few volts lower than what it's being given....

[@jkrahulec]

@@LetsOverthinkThis I wanted to follow-up and thank you. Your project was a great primer for me. I successfully built my solar station, which includes an airMAX NanoStation 5AC Loco (for longer distance network connectivity), a USW Flex switch, a UAP AC M (prior generation outdoor mesh AP), and two G4 Bullet cameras. It performs like a champ. I went with the UAP AC M (prior generation outdoor mesh AP) because the power draw is *much* lower than the U6 Mesh.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@jkrahulec Wow, I'm so glad I helped but shocked and delighted you came back to let me know! It's MUCH appreciated as much of youtube is fairly one-directional. Enjoy your system and thanks again!

[@gideons300club3]

Thank You Nieghbor for these very helpful videos

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thanks for watching!

[@albertohorihuela]

How does the camera obtain the internet signal from this setup? Is the access point sending internet access through the ethernet cable back to the POE switch, and from the switch to the camera?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Yes, basically the ethernet connector on the mesh antenna functionally makes anything connected to that look exactly like it's plugged into the ethernet cable the "host" mesh antenna is attached to, so I can plug anything into that little remote switch and for all it knows, that switch is wired into the switch in the container (albeit at a lower speed).

[@albertohorihuela]

@@LetsOverthinkThis Thank you! I hadn't seen this setup before.

[@edwardfurtak5701]

Great video ! I’m installing a similar situation in Costa Rica where we’ve got lots of sun as well. I will be adding a Pepwave BR1 for 5G Internet. With everything you have in the video plus a Pepwave Router, how long would all of that last during days of overcast with the battery that you chose? Also, if you didn’t mind day only camera transmission could you power the camera directly off the panels without a battery and possibly less hardware ? So as the sun comes up , the cameras all wake up too ? Any help appreciated!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

I don't know how much wattage the pepwave pulls but if you add what I have up (G5, G4 Pro, Flex switch, and U6 Mesh) you're at about 34 watts. The POE injectors are not 100% efficient at all so lets call it 40 watts. The battery has about 1200wh of energy so if it was 100% you could theoretically power it all for about 30 hours. Unfortunately this stuff is hard to calculate in REALITY because I don't know where you are in the world, which helps determine how many solar hours you actually get, plus your panels may or may not be aimed right for each time of year (mine are not). Mine is fine with overcast but in the winter mine has a few days where it can't keep up if I get more than one day of dark stormy clouds in a row. As for your second question, maybe but it's not straightforward. The cameras need 48v from POE and the panels only put out around 40v with 2 in series so you still need something to boost the voltage (the poe injectors I have do this). But yes, you would theoretically do away with the charge controller and the battery and the POE injector would turn on when it has enough voltage and current to do its thing. I don't know if it would last as long.... not all electronics are meant to be undervolted every single day, but it's possible!

[@rkeantube]

I was looking for a DC PoE injector, nice thanks for the link

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

You're welcome! They have a variety of models that I've used for different applications and they're good at what they do.

[@tizer476]

Great part 1 and 2 but whats your actual internet service/modem?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Starlink! Works great but only option out here anyway.

[@davidjaye710]

can you secure the mesh network cameras and antenna with passwords?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Oh for sure.

[@brucebello2049]

Excellent video, thank you

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

You're welcome, thx for watching 🙏

[@OneAmongBillions]

Thanks for the wonderful explanation!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Glad you liked it! Check out part 2 for the install 🙌

[@PlazmaStone]

If you wanted to run this 24hrs how big of bank would you need to hold it up for 3days?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Like assuming no solar at all?

[@PlazmaStone]

@@LetsOverthinkThis 2 days(easier math) it would stay up with little to no sun.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Id have to pull the logs to see the actual watt draw these days but my guess is you'd need 150-200 ah to last 48 hours with no solar input at all. And the napkin math makes sense... Assuming about 40 watts full draw including power loss in the power injectors etc. 48 hours x 40 watts is about 2000 watt hours. Which is about 160 ah @ 12v. Again, just napkin math.

[@PlazmaStone]

@@LetsOverthinkThis Thank you for the answers, it really helps ~!

[@user-zr7kz4vs7c]

Would a unifi point-to-point bridge works better ?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

"Better" depends on how you define it :) Yes, that would give e a more stable and faster connection over a longer distance, which would be better if I was only interested in connecting to my remote cameras. BUT I also wanted to extend my wifi over to where that remote station was. If I used a PtP bridge, I'd have to power yet another antenna (the PtP receiver) as well as the wifi AP I have there, and since it's all solar, that extra ~6 watts running 24 hours a day does actually matter. So the mesh is more "elegant" in that it serves my needs with the minimum components needed. But indeed, it's not as fast as a PtP would be and it's pushing the limit on distance. Another 50 feet or so and I'd probably have to go with a PtP. Great question though, and thanks for watching!

[@user-zr7kz4vs7c]

@@LetsOverthinkThis Thanks for your reply, that's really helpful. May I ask what's the difference in speed (PtP receiver vs unifi mesh) ?

[@berthaduniverse]

Very nice... Keep these videos coming!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thanks! Still trying to figure out what people like. Fine line between not being anything new and being so long or educational that nobody watches! Appreciate the encouragement 🙌

[@berthaduniverse]

@@LetsOverthinkThis I could chat this all day! LOL! It would be nice to see something on the process of choosing your location and what regulations you need to honor in your building process.

[@glenwiley6300]

How are you getting your internet out there, I imagine it is by satellite. Which service did you choose?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

I was getting it from a company that has a relay station on the mountain and uses ubiquity gear to give you internet in these remote parts since I have line of site to their antenna. But since starlink came out it blew everyone out of the water in my opinion.

[@nolinovio6748]

very cool video. I learned so much! Thank you

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Glad it was helpful!

[@starpuss]

Wow Tractor Videos And Camera Videos , Yup Glade i Subbed. I run a Pretty Large Camera Shop Retail / Installing Cameras and Videos like this i like! And offgrid is always my dream , But with running a business in the city is always hard to get time to do things.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Glad you're enjoying what I'm posting so far! And thanks for the comment :)

[@gideons300club3]

what is the brand name of the 100watt solar panel?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Those are Renogy panels. All of the links are in the video description btw.

[@rss608]

Good video, great explain!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

[@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration]

the only thing i would change is to have a bit more solar to charge the battery enough so that it could power a small heater in the winter so it can be in an insulated box and continue working below freezing

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Howdy, yes, for sure! I would likely advocate for a heated battery since a lot of the needed parts would be built in, plus it would only be heating the battery, but either way a must-have for cold winters. Thanks for watching and commenting!

[@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration]

Thank you for your reply. I eagerly await your next videos on this project. This is one of my favorite projects.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration Thanks! So glad you like it. Just posted the second part, in case you haven't seen it yet: kzbin.info/www/bejne/enWnYYlpgL1-nas

[@saludyvida7143]

Thanks for sharing my friend 👍

[@sethlane785]

This is great - one would think that "WiFi in a Box" was available commercially, or really "PoE in a box" coming with everything but the end device (e.g. WiFi Access Point), then you can just drop these things all over the place and plug Mesh AP's in them. Yes, you explained how you could do that but rather than buying and building with all he parts, would much prefer to buy one SKU! But that's not the name of this channel of course :-)

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

It's a good point but I think the problem is that the poe relies entirely on how many things you want to power and the environment. Even if they had the poe in a box for one wifi device, what assumptions would they make around how many hours of sun and at what location, you know? The system I needed for my 2 cameras and one antenna, located in a place with lots of solar energy and few full cloud days is different from what others would need. It's very hard to generalize and they'd have to WAY overdo it to actually promise a working product that was all in one. Just my 2 cents!

[@nycslane]

agreed, and the different types of PoE as you mentioned - I am a Network Engineer in my day life :-) I still think WiFi is driving force as some/many have figured out power - I use Blink outdoor camera and while their videos aren’t the highest quality, they work on AA batteries and last for years (I think)!

[@samanthapowell5882]

Should have used a Battle Born Battery but looks great!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Yeah ive heard great things but given the price difference couldn't justify it for this use case. Maybe next time!

[@samanthapowell5882]

@@LetsOverthinkThis but you did everything else with the best! And add more cameras on there you have the ports, and paint everything with Bedliner including the printed parts, last they make waterproof totes with a seal on the lid

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@samanthapowell5882 All good points! The bedliner is a great idea for keeping the UV off of the plastic. Thanks again :)

[@Chasing_The_Dream]

Great video.

[@richacevedo660]

Great Video!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Thanks rich!

[@richacevedo660]

@@LetsOverthinkThis would you share your 3d files i want to do something very similar to this

[@Legendary_UA]

Nice but I'd used one of the smaller EcoFlow systems. But a really nice concept

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Totally would work.... I have a bigger Bluetti so I'm familiar with those products. Unfortunately you'd need a Delta 2 to match the 1.2kwh of energy I have here which gets pretty pricey. IE a small ecoflow doesn't have nearly the energy. But lots of ways to get it done for sure and thanks for watching!

[@bowenfibre]

I don't understand but i do understand why he's doing mesh wifi, but doing UBNT PTMP would be so much better. it would come to 26-35watts for everything. if he ran fibre or stung fibre alone poles to the main and tallest pole, the fibre ptp uses only 5V/3.5watts at load and brings 1gb or can bring 10gb depending on SFP module. Just need a trench and conduit run that single fibre to the main tall pole and then use a UBNT 120 or 90 degree all in on sector which are cheap and then use nanostations for each camera/wifi/sensors pole. these poles can be 10kms - 40kms away with enough bandwidth for those two cameras or three cameras with the wifi also. this all using 35watts-45watts-55watts depending on which equipment is used. But a wireless PTMP with proper equipment for PTMP would be so much better for this project. Truly. I have my own 56 acre land here in Australia and we have one 120 degree sector but using a rocket ap 5GHz for the PTMP which has 44 clients and we use solar panels and also use hydro power for the equipment near the river that never stops flowing our equipment is usually in the middle of the pole besides the batteries. we have close to 140 cameras on our property, sensors for automatic gates, sensors for water levels where we can push a button an the water will fill the bath back up. we have so many sensors over the property we hvae close to 300-350Mbps coming back to the house and roughly around 40Mbps going out.But out property is a smart farm with auto feeders, auto lights, auto fill stations for water, auto almost everything. IT was a HUGE project I went on I might have to post this on reddit and show the map and photos of certain locations. IT's been running perfectly for over 5-6 years no issues besides my side losing street power. everything else ran no problems due to solar panels and batteries. We now have UPS on the main house side and the UDM PRO so everything keeps recording and running our lenovo and raspberry pi server. It works perfect I also used fibre ptp to run from my home to my front gate for cameras and gate control and controlling lights and doorbell and intercom, we have 4 cameras on the gate and 5 cameras along the drive way from gate to house we used fibre, we did this using a multi core fibre so each pole/light had a camera and a box for battery and fibre converter. it just worked. it's complicated but works. at the end of the day I would go fibre to the main pole and do UBNT PTMP for these cameras it will be cheaper and work much better. Truly.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Wow that was a rant! 😜 I appreciate that wired (incld fiber) always works better but it's not like trenching here is easy or cheap and although it would work better I don't need any more than I have. Dealing with renting the trencher and having to manually jackhammer every rock i come across that it can't move just to have higher bandwidth for my 2 cameras is not objectively better to me even with the bandwidth. Agreed that using a ptp radio would be better for bandwidth and reliability as well (mesh isnt great for bandwidth I know) but all that station needs to serve is the 2 cameras and a person or two taking a wifi phone call while on the build site and it's worked great for those. Your situation clearly does call for the bandwidth! So I don't disagree technically, but I do disagree whether it's worth it or necessary, you know? Either way much appreciate the comment 🙏 (Btw there is no main pole...im off grid 😁)

[@car2069]

Missed opportunity to simplify with a Linovision POE switch that directly accepts 12-48v and gives you 60w of poe at 12v in and 120w at 24-48v in. I built basically the same thing on one of my silos to get wifi in the field. Mounted everything to the roof with all my electronics in a pelican case under the solar panels

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Nice! I wanted to stay with unifi but that's a good option if it outputs actual 802.3 af and not just passive poe. Most just output passive poe which isnt good enough for these cameras. What model are you using?

[@car2069]

@@LetsOverthinkThis using the U6 long range AP and G5 bullet cam. A used LG 305w solar panel, a victron mppt100/20, enjoybot 100ah lithium iron and Lino vision 5 port switch. Everything is mounted in a overstock pelican case that was designed to fit a ventilator from the pandemic days. The panels keep the pelican case shaded to hopefully prevent overheating, and I am in a climate with very few days below freezing so I don’t have a temperature sensor. They claim it is 802.3 af/at and I haven’t had any issues in 5ish months since install.

[@Cantgetusernam]

What internet service are you using? I can't get any wifi camera to work unless it's on the internet. Below us my issue. You don't want these floodlight camera if it's wifi because none work when Internet goes out leaving you with NO LIGHT and NO SECURITY. They can make the camera and light work without internet so you at least have your light and camera local for security like you can connect to a printer by wifi without internet. Don't buy ANY wifi light camera unless they allow them to work when the internet drops. I found this out the hardway when a hurricane hit us we had power but internet dropped then we had ZERO outside light or Security. So to disable your security and light all someone has to do is just cut your internet.

[@kevinholland4156]

I guess you have to know the world of three-letter acronyms. Man, you lost me!

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

Tell me which ones I failed to explain and I'll try and help!

[@kevinholland4156]

@@LetsOverthinkThis I'm not understanding WIFI mesh. I understand repeaters for I have a RV repeater set inside my metal barn with an outside antenna that picks up the WIFI from the house and rebroadcasts it to the inside and about 50' from the building. I would like to use wireless cameras to monitor different spots on my ranch. I have done several solar systems, but I don't understand what a POE is? Is it a way to hook repeaters or is it an ethernet block?

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@kevinholland4156 Hey Kevin. Normally with a repeater you can't have the same wifi name since it's actually competing with the original. You may be getting away with it if you're in a metal barn, but the benefit of mesh is that's you can expand your network with the same network name almost infinitely in any direction you want. POE is power over ethernet... I probably talked for 5+ minutes about it, it's neither of the things you mentioned. It's just a way of POWERING devices through the ethernet cable itself.

[@kevinholland4156]

@@LetsOverthinkThis The one in the building has a second name and shows up as a second wifi connection with a separate password. It does just pick up the WiFi from the house though.

[@LetsOverthinkThis]

@@kevinholland4156 Right, thats what I was saying in the video about the benefit of a mesh being that they all have the same network name. Imagine if you used repeaters to cover a large area you'd have a bunch of network names and your devices would always be hopping between them....