So, my plan is to have the gametrail cams (and for the sake of brevity we shall just call them trailcams from here on in) positioned at a few strategic points around the Beta Site for when I’m not there. Problem is, they rely on periodic battery swaps or recharging, and require a cell signal to send me updates and info. Now, I’m good with this for the time being. I picked up the solar panel and lithium battery pack to try out and I’ll be setting that up on my next trip up there. The ultimate plan, however, is, once something gets built, to put in a multicam DVR system like I have here in town. The drawback, of course, is going to be the power requirements. I currently run nine cameras here at the house. Each camera has its own 12v power requirement. Additionally, the DVR runs on AC power as does the computer monitor I use to watch the feeds. The ideal is to have a camera setup that goes to StarLink so I can monitor things remotely, including one camera pointed at a screen full of metrics like temperature, battery charge, etc, so I can make sure things are running smoothly when Im not there. Thing is, there is no power up there. Zero. So any system has to run on whatever power can be made available.
My understanding is that things will be more efficient if I can run everything natively on DC. (“Natively”, in this context, means that the devices were originally made to run on DC rather than AC devices that are running on AC that is coming from a DC transformer. Such arrangements, as I understand it, are not efficient.)
The cameras are DC, which means they can be run off of a battery system. And I can run a laptop monitor off of DC as well. (More on that in a few paragraphs.) StarLink, also, can be run on DC. So that leaves the one holdout being the DVR itself. I have to go hunt down if such things are available. But I also need to do some math and calculate what kind of power draw running, say, nine cameras 24/7, a DVR, a monitor, and StarLink will accrue. Then I need to imagine a battery system capable of running that type of thing and factoring how long it can run before the batteries get to , say, 50% charge. And then its a matter of calculating what kind of power input from a solar panel system is required and than scaling that to the anticipated need.
Perusing the internet has shown that many people are using PoE (power over ethernet) systems. It appears, though, that these require 48v and since power will be at a bit of a premium it may mean that a less modern 12v system of cameras and DVR will have to be the way to go.
On the bright side, I think I may have figured out one part of the equation. I was wondering about powering a computer monitor and I remembered that portable laptop monitors were a thing. I picked one up and and figured that since they were designed for use with a laptop, which is a portable DC device, perhaps I could have it simply run off a laptop-type battery.
Turns out, the particular one I picked up, runs off USB-C and mini-HDMI. Googled the specs on it and it says that it uses 9.4 watts of power. Asking Google what size battery would be required to run a 9.4 watt device for 24 hours gave me the answer that “To run a 9.4-watt device for 24 hours, you need a battery with at least 225.6 watt-hours (Wh) of capacity ( ). For practical usage, accounting for efficiency losses, you should use a 12V 20Ah Lithium (LiFePO4) battery or a 12V 40Ah Lead-Acid battery.”
Hmm. Well, a while back I picked up a large lithium power pack to charge my phones and radios. Specifically, this guy. The listing says 288watt-hours. So, in theory, one 24-hour cycle of use would reduce the battery by about 78%. Thats fine, I’ll worry about capacity later, right now I want to see if this will work as-is without any weird messing around with things.
Well, yeah, of course I dithered out the images from the security cams. What are you, new here?
So, I unplugged the HDMI-HDMI cable from my DVR and plugged in the HDMI-miniHDMI cable that came with the laptop monitor. Then I grabbed a USB-C-to-USB-C cable and plugged one end into the monitor and one end into the battery pack. And it worked.So thats one part of the equation that I at least have a handle on.