{"id":3391,"date":"2026-08-25T12:52:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/?p=3391"},"modified":"2026-08-25T12:52:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:52:05","slug":"gate-power-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/ha\/gate-power-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Gate Power Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A question posted on a Facebook group this morning inspired a reply post in which I told the CliffsNotes<\/a> version of the gate story. That has inspired me to update here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, the OP in the group was asking for advice on providing solar power for a security camera. The generalized advice give came in three basic forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. An off the shelf solar camera. Reolink<\/a>, for example, makes several models. I have been considering this option to deploy cameras where I can better monitor the horses in the pastures. I did consider this for my gate camera, but I was also already into a mild sunk cost fallacy of wanting my own system to work. Plus, eventually I needed more than just a camera at the gate and my solar system now provides power for all of those devices.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. An off the shelf solar power pack. Honestly, looking for something like this had not even occurred to me when I was developing this gate camera power system. While I don’t think the reasonably priced units would have worked in the long run, for just the camera, it would be pretty elegant.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. There was quite a lot of advice on sizing and building a solar power system. The gist of the advice was that you need 3-4 times more solar and battery capacity than your load requires in order to keep a battery charged with only 8ish hours of sunlight a day and especially for marginal cloudy days.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I think my major contribution to the conversation would be my logged battery voltage, showing the tendency for the battery to trend lower each day when there is inadequate sunlight for a full charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Shelly UNI battery voltage log on Home Assistant now has nearly 9 months of data to review. Here is the year to date chart:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    This is also kind of a weather log. Dark regions reflect cloudy and\/or rainy days where sunlight was low. For example, the significant dip in late January corresponds to a few days of light snow, sleet and stupid cold temperatures, a low of 11F. Similarly for the low dips in early March, late April and early May, all cloudy and stormy days. Almost no significantly cloudy days since May 21. Wunderground history<\/a> is a very handy resource. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The trend revealed here is that, other than the dips from cloudy days, the nightly low voltage slowly climbs from January to May, where it remains pretty stable to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A question posted on a Facebook group this morning inspired a reply post in which I told the CliffsNotes version of the gate story. That has inspired me to update here. In short, the OP in the group was asking for advice on providing solar power for a security camera. The generalized advice give came … Continue reading Gate Power Update<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3393,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions\/3393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n5hrk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}