Raspberry Pi 1 Solar Powered CCTV - Possible?

**Rick Sanchez** · 12th February 2015

Hi Guys,

I'm rebuilding my motobikes which are located a mile away and I'm looking to build a cheap but effective CCTV system that has 3/4G data connection back to my server/dropbox etc on motion detection.

Is this possible?

**evilsatan** · 12th February 2015

I don't know about solar powered but some IP cams can record to FTP servers (or at least they can send regular snapshots) and would be remotely accessible. Problem with using mobile sims though is the IPs are shared so you can't remote in to the camera directly, had the same problem on a job a couple of years ago where they wanted regular shots taken to turn into a video as they built a university. I set up regular emails to a gmail account from the camera which attached shots so they could be bulk downloaded by thunderbird at the end.

**Squizza** · 12th February 2015

There are some solar panel projects out there. If you take a look here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sola...-Raspberry-Pi/
It recommends the model A as it is lower power. I am looking into the same thing for work and at home. Personally I would use a bigger panel/battery to ensure you have enough juice.

After that it should be fairly straight forward. Google is your friend when it comes to software etc..

**Rick Sanchez** · 12th February 2015

Originally Posted by evilsatan

I don't know about solar powered but some IP cams can record to FTP servers (or at least they can send regular snapshots) and would be remotely accessible. Problem with using mobile sims though is the IPs are shared so you can't remote in to the camera directly, had the same problem on a job a couple of years ago where they wanted regular shots taken to turn into a video as they built a university. I set up regular emails to a gmail account from the camera which attached shots so they could be bulk downloaded by thunderbird at the end.

Ok cool, I'll dig into that more, thanks!

Originally Posted by Squizza

There are some solar panel projects out there. If you take a look here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sola...-Raspberry-Pi/
It recommends the model A as it is lower power. I am looking into the same thing for work and at home. Personally I would use a bigger panel/battery to ensure you have enough juice.

After that it should be fairly straight forward. Google is your friend when it comes to software etc..

Good call, especially when CEX have offered me �14 for my B model

**blacksheep** · 13th February 2015

Might be worth having a battery backup for nighttime? http://www.robotroom.com/Solar-Recharging.html

simple solution and doesn't properly measure battery charge but should do the job.

**Rick Sanchez** · 14th February 2015

That is what I was thinking as well! I've found a spare 12v motorbike battery that I am going to try and repurpose for this job

**blacksheep** · 15th February 2015

That link should allow the pi to run off solar when doable and trickle charge the battery with any excess. It's not a smart charger but as long as you maintain certain limits you're not going to have anything go terribly wrong.