Ranching technology post 2

A double rainbow imaged and sent to me earlier today
In an effort to expand my surveillance capabilities on the ranch I'm now in the process of developing smaller independent surveillance stations that are able to connect (via wifi) to the central surveillance station.  This will allow the stations to be positioned at other parts of the ranch and, consequently, image more areas.  Each station will be solar powered and have a minimum of one camera and one Raspberry Pi computer. 
Testing the new systems electricity consumption.  On a 106ah marine battery the system operated for seven days. 
For this project, to reduce the risk residual software complications such as those highlighted in my first technology post, I started with a clean install of the Wheezy operating system and wrote mostly new programing.  Though it is more work to start from scratch now, it will probably save me a lot of trouble later.  The programing of the system handles three basic tasks: 1) how the camera is triggered to capture images, 2) how the images are processed prior to transfer, and 3) transferring the images to the main surveillance station. 

Once I had successfully completed the programming and worked out all of the bugs, I next tested the system's power consumption.  To do this I wired the system to a photovoltaic charge controller (with no photovoltaic input) connected to a deep-cycle marine battery (106AH) and allowed it to run, without interruption, until the battery fell below the cutoff voltage of the charge controller.  This experiment was run in my house with my duplicate system acting as the main surveillance station.  It took seven days for the battery to run below the cutoff voltage. 

Based upon the amount of time it took the system to drain the marine battery, I was able to calculate the size of battery and solar panel for each station.  With this information I've ordered enough batteries and solar panels for two of these new stations.  Once these items arrive, the only thing that will remain for me to do will be to fabricate the brackets for holding the panels and install the systems.

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