So its been a week since I left the Jackery and panels set up at the Beta Site and left Starlink running off it so I can get live camera feeds from up there. How has that worked out, you ask?
TL;DR: awesome.
The first three days of the week were rainy and virtually sunless. As a result, the Jackery hit a low of 51% charge. After that, the sun came out and that brought it up into the mid-70% range, then 80%, and for the last two days its beein in the 93-100% range. So, for that entire length of time, Starlink was consistently running 24/7. Because there was active internet there the whole time, I could check the battery charge as often as I wanted and get real-time metrics. Here’s a few screenshots from the Jackery app:
As you can, at this particular moment in time the Starlink was drawing 17 watts. It’s draw fluctuates anywhere from 10 to 35 watts depending on how much data is going as opposed to just ‘standing by’ with the cameras off. However, what this seems to indicate, and Im an idiot in regard to electricity so perhaps Im being naive, is that for about every one hour of sunlight I’m getting about ten hours of internet.
In addition to the information shown above, it also tracks historical energy input from the panels. Observe:
SO, long story short, this was enough to let me remotely access the two remote wireless cameras I had set up. Each individual camera came with a small solar panel to power it’s internal battery. I replaced the came-with-it panel with something a little larger becase nothing kills like overkill. At one point during the three days of rain the cameras got down to about 60% charge but once the sun started doing its thing theyve been in the high 90%’s ever since.
Because I’m concerned about battery conservation, I havent left these cameras running 24/7. I just check them a couple times a day to see how the weather is up there. Because they are not running 24/7, the individual cameras seem to be doing a good job of staying ‘topped off’.
One issue I’ve had is that as I was placing a second camera, I was limited by the range of the wifi connection from the Starlink. If I’m going to continue this project, I need to move the Starlink to a location that is withing range of both cameras.
Speaking of cameras. It turns out that CostCo sells the same brand of camera but the next higher grade for only $20 more than the ‘entry’ camera from this brand that I picked up. DIfference? Separate zoom lens, remote control floodlight, and a bunch of other nice features. Absolutely worth the $20 difference, hands down. CostCo is selling it at $119, and Amazon has it currently for $139.
Unfortunately, as much fun as I am having with this, it’s going to have to come to an end soon. It appears that the Jackery battery is of the type that does not do well with being recharged when it is below freezing. What this means is that if I want to continue this fun over the winter, I need to put together a battery/charging system that uses batteries that are indifferent to being discharged/charged at temperatures below freezing.
This isn’t a flaw with the Jackery…it’s not marketed as an all-season outdoor product. Its marketed as a camping and blackout sort of gear. In those capacities, it seems to be excellent. For my purposes, its great for use during the summer months but for winter use I’m going to have to come up with something else. And, yes, the make self-heating lithium batteries but heating via electricity is incredibly inefficient and high draw.
Over the winter the batteries would be sitting in the unheated conex, so any battery solution must be predicated on that kind of environment. More research awaits.
But, in the meantime, I’m really enjoying how this is working out so far. If I lived in a place where freezing temps were not an issue, like the southern states, I’d totally have this setup going all the time.
I’ll be heading up to the Beta Site tomomrrow to install a third webcam over the area where the bears have been munching that dead mule deer. I’m exceited to see if I can get some live-action bear cam.