💥New 2024 Off-Grid Solar Meshtastic Build💥

[Music] what's up everyone and welcome back to the cops Channel I'm here to help you get up and running with off- grid communication setups so you can still communicate with friends and family in the event that the standard communication systems we often take for granted go down if you've been a subscriber for a while or have watched some of my older videos you're probably familiar with the mesh tastic solar enclosure build I did about 7 months ago I've been working on some improvements to make this build better less expensive easier to build and more capable so that's what we'll be covering in today's video so join me and let's get prepared for off grid [Music] Communications we're approaching a restricted area restricted area is one mile West the four we get into it I just want to give a quick shout out to the Channel's recent supporters your support is very much appreciated and if you're finding these videos useful and would like to support the channel as well you can do so by using the coffee Link in the video description or by using the thanks button below the video thank you for your support and helping with the Channel's continued production here we have the original solar enclosure build alongside the new version and as you can see they're similar in size and style and for this new build we're also continuing to use the whiz block to run mesh tastic is that continues to be the best platform for remote and off-grid use especially for solar as it's extremely power efficient and since it uses an NR 52 microcontroller The Whiz block gets about a week and a half on the 18650 battery compare that to devices with the esp32 microcontroller like the t-beam or htech you only get about a day of battery life on a single 18650 battery the other big benefit of the whiz block is the Bluetooth range since it has an external antenna for Bluetooth you're going to get more range out of it and I'm able to connect mine throughout my house the stock antenna works great but if you want more range you can also get an upgraded Bluetooth antenna since it's external so those are the similarities let's go over the changes and improvements over the previous build starting from the outside we have the same size enclosure but from a different manufacturer one of the things I like about this new enclosure are the stainless steel buckles to keep the door latched down and secure versus the plastic ones from the previous enclosure the biggest Improvement however is going to be the mounting ability of the new enclosure for the original enclosure the only mounting bracket I could find that would fit was this Universal Mount designed for security cameras that we see on the back here while it did work fine it was a bit cumbersome to put together and mount to a pole for the new enclosure I was able to find a more traditional antenna Mass mount bracket with ubolt that fits this new enclosure perfectly giving it a more professional look not only that at the time of this video the new enclosure is actually less expensive than the previous one for those of you mounting this to the side of a pre-existing antenna Mast with antenna on top another benefit of the mounting bracket used on this new version is it sets the enclosure away from the pole on its own the previous version required purchasing this J Poole Mount if you wanted to do that which increased the cost of the build I've received a few comments on the previous build about the solar panel being flat against the enclosure and not angled towards the sun we've had a number of these on the field that have been working fine for a little under a year now and they've never gone under 80% now I'm in the South so this may not be the case up north and you may need a solar panel angled more towards the Sun up there we have a solution for that with the new build as well if you need to angle yours towards the sun there's an additional bracket from the same company that makes the bracket we're using to mount the enclosure to the antenna Mast the bracket will mount to the pole here and has adjustments that can be made to whatever angle you need and there's websites that you can go to where you can enter in your location and it'll give you the best angle for your area and I'll I'll include a link to that in the video description another Improvement is the antenna Rockland Technologies has this small inexpensive 5dbi 9915 MHz antenna from alpha now I've tested this and it has great SWR and the 9115 MHz range so I'm now recommending this antenna since it has an end connector and makes it more robust in case Rockin sells out of these antennas there's another small antenna that I feel should be small enough to safely Mount directly onto the enclosure this antenna was supposed to be delivered last week but seems to be lost in the mail at the moment so I've not gotten a chance to test it out every ant I've tested from Rockin so far has been great so I suspect that this one will be no different but I'll be sure to to post an update after I'm able to test it for those of you that would still prefer to use an antenna with an SMA connector I found a good SMA mount with an O-ring for waterproofing instead of having to buy a sheet of rubber to cut and create your own waterproof seal like we did on the previous version so those are the improvements outside let's open it up and have a peek inside and take a look at what's changed the previous enclosure and this new one both come with these same style mounting grids inside the problem with this grid is the mounting holes and The Whiz block don't line up with the grid so there's no easy way to mount it the solution to this on the original version was to purchase the whis block enclosure drill holes in that to match the grid Mount the enclosure to the grid and then Mount the whz block to the enclosure while this worked fine you had to spend money on an enclosure and it only comes with a single battery holder my solution on the new version is this custom acrylic board I designed for laser cutting that replaces the grid board that comes with the enclosure now we can mount The Whiz block directly to this instead of having to purchase an enclosure for it we can now also fit up to three dual 18650 battery holders for a total of six batteries so I've set up an Etsy shop to sell these as kits and I'll be selling these in a number of configurations the first option is a version with just the board that'll come with the acrylic board and mounting hardware for The Whiz block that you can drill yourself and customize to fit your needs then the remaining options all come with the acrylic board whiz block mounting hardware and then one two or three battery holders for a total of six possible batteries most people won't need six batteries and like I mentioned earlier during my testing I've gone about a week and a half on a single 18650 battery powering a whiz block so that means you'll get a little over two months on six batteries and that'll be overkill for most people but if you have a need for it the option is there the current pricing with the single battery holder is about the same price as the enclosure from rack Wireless but you'll get a dual battery holder for the ability to use two batteries instead of the one like the rack Wireless enclosure the battery holders in this first batch are a bit on the pricey side at over $6 each so things get costly as you get the versions with multiple holders I have found some less expensive battery holders that appear to be the same size so I'll be testing those out when they arrive and offer my kits for cheaper if they work out it may be a few weeks before they are available though but my goal is to cut the cost down to where you can get the single dual holder option for less than the price of the rack enclosure then the two dual holders for about the same cost and then the three dual holders for a slightly higher cost the current run is sold out but I have a decent amount of supplies on the way and I would like to gauge how many people are interested in these kits so so please leave a comment if you're interested so I can order more supplies if needed that just about covers the overview of the new solar build if you like what you see and want to build one of your own join me in the next video where we go through the build process if you're finding these videos useful please be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already done so and join me for the rest of this solar build so we can get your off-grid coms up and running thank you all and have a good one

Channel: The Comms Channel

Views: 111,426

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Id: shlttaysWJM

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024