I Built an Off Grid MeshCore Repeater Into a Solar Lantern | Meshtastic

[00:00:02]Hello, and welcome to Iteration X.

[00:00:05]Today, we're going to have a look at these solar strobe lights or lanterns, or whatever they're called on I bought this on AliExpress.

[00:00:16]For about 15 to 20 dollars each.

[00:00:21]It's a hanging What do you call it? Lantern. I think it's meant for use on boats.

[00:00:30]Um It has a battery and three solar panels.

[00:00:38]Inside they're they're quite weak, but I did build one.

[00:00:44]And I put an LFA antenna on it.

[00:00:46]I had it hanging out for a couple of weeks and it never went down. So, at least if you have summer and sun If you live in a country with a lot of sun, you could probably have it running almost year round.

[00:01:01]In the Nordics, I don't think that would work out very well, but um Anyway, I I found it to be a fun project. And um Inside this one is a one of the seed modules.

[00:01:19]Um this is the smaller NRF module.

[00:01:25]So, it's um Let's just take the antenna out.

[00:01:34]It's a very compact module.

[00:01:37]It's got some pins on on below here.

[00:01:42]You have to be careful because um uh with this one you you don't have a charging circuit built in.

[00:01:51]So, you will have to use an external charger to connect um everything up.

[00:01:58]And this is the I found on AliExpress, the solar charger version 1.0.

[00:02:04]You also have the, CN 3970 two, I think. I I don't really remember.

[00:02:11]I don't have one on hand right now, but, um, um, I had one of these inside this lantern here.

[00:02:23]So, with these, you have to be a bit careful because you have those pins sticking out and I wasn't thinking at all when I screwed the lantern together and one of these actually made contact somewhere here and this one smoked up really bad.

[00:02:41]So, be careful. If you're using one of these, make sure to wrap it in in some, um, electrical tape or something. Um, yeah. So, we won't be using one of those today.

[00:02:54]Um, today we're going to use the RAK4631.

[00:02:59]And this is the more compact module.

[00:03:01]It's, uh, this is the still the same base, Laura module, but the base board is a bit shorter than the, um, the recent longer version.

[00:03:16]This is the RAK 1900 three, I think. And there's one with seven, um, that's is the longer version.

[00:03:27]And that's what we're going to fit in here.

[00:03:31]To, open this, they they have put some kind of sealing, um, I don't know, something on here and it's basically impossible to open with hand power.

[00:03:44]Um, if you had some kind of, um, huge, uh, wrench or something, probably you could do it or break the plastics, I don't know. But, I found out that if you use a heat gun, you just heat it up here and you can use I'm going to use a glove and remove unscrew it. So, it Let's do that.

[00:04:36]Okay, so now I got it to turn.

[00:04:43]And remember, it's really, really hot, so make sure to you wear a glove. I can feel the heat through this glove, too, so Okay, we got it off. [snorts] So, here is the Let me get my glove off.

[00:05:07]So, here is the control module. If you could see on here, we had a red mark there. And that mark was to use a magnet that's included to activate this light. I think it's maybe here.

[00:05:27]Yes.

[00:05:28]So, that's the control circuit that's included in this.

[00:05:34]Um looks like it's fastened with two I can zoom it in a bit.

[00:05:44]So, this is how it looks. It's got two no, three screws.

[00:05:49]And then you have two cables. One is for the solar, one is for the battery.

[00:06:00]>> [snorts] >> So, let me just unscrew this.

[00:06:26]>> [snorts] >> Okay. So, we got this loosened up.

[00:06:31]There is a um some packaging in here to get the things to stay down. I think you can slide everything out. It's just, yeah.

[00:06:46]So, here is the solar panels. You can see in the middle they put a 18650 battery.

[00:06:56]The this this one is supposed to be 1,800 milliamps.

[00:07:02]So, that's the whole module.

[00:07:05]>> [snorts] >> We're going to disconnect this circuit here.

[00:07:10]Cuz this is not what we want to use.

[00:07:23]Okay. So, we got this one.

[00:07:25]I don't think I am ever going to use this for anything.

[00:07:29]So, might just throw it away. You can see in the backside here it's got battery and solar. I think that's an S. So, let's check this out now.

[00:07:53]So, to connect the rack units, we need to have a smaller version of the cable here.

[00:08:02]So, we need one of these.

[00:08:06]This is the solar connector. It's much smaller than this one.

[00:08:10]>> [snorts] >> Oh, let me see if I can focus that. Yes, so these are much smaller.

[00:08:17]So, the ones that goes from the solar here, it's actually the one I hold here.

[00:08:23]We're going to cut these wires and replace them with this.

[00:08:30]There's another one down here.

[00:08:32]So, let's get the soldering iron running.

[00:09:12]We need to prepare these cables a bit.

[00:09:23]And one more thing, I'm going to check the polarity on this.

[00:09:31]So, this will connect like this.

[00:09:38]I think.

[00:09:45]Yeah, it looks like that's the correct Yes. So, we got the right the plus is going to be on the right side. You can see the red color here they have.

[00:10:00]And the same on the battery side.

[00:10:02]Not really sure if we need to switch the battery.

[00:10:12]The battery's going to connect like this.

[00:10:16]So, yes, we got the battery correct, too.

[00:10:26]Let me try to get some focus here. Okay, so we're going to cut the wires here from the solar circuit.

[00:12:12]>> Okay, so that's the soldering done.

[00:12:15]I forgot to mention and I forgot to film that we also extended the wires to the battery.

[00:12:21]Um the reason for this is that once you place your antenna in the lid here, we're going to drill a hole and put a SMA connector here.

[00:12:32]But once you drill have have it fastened here and you connect the wires, you can't disconnect your antenna.

[00:12:40]So, you have to rewind it before you start screwing it in. So, having a lot of wire here is not bad. So, let's just try it out. I didn't do this on the first one. I only extended the solar connector and I had some issues with getting it screwed on. So, I think this is going to work [snorts] out well.

[00:13:05]So, the next step is that we are going to put a maybe not this one.

[00:13:11]I have a couple of SMA connectors, so we're going to drill a hole for this one in the top here and get it out.

[00:13:22]So, let's check what kind of drill we're going to have for this?

[00:13:31]Not sure if it's 6 mm perhaps for an SMA.

[00:13:45]I think that could work.

[00:13:49]It's going to be a bit wide.

[00:13:51]But that's [snorts] not a problem.

[00:13:55]So, let's get my drill.

[00:14:10]So, basically what I've done is uh just drill from the inside. Then you If you drill from the outside, it's just going to spin around here. Uh so, if you drill from the inside here, you're going to get it quite focused in the center here.

[00:14:32]I think I did not tighten my drill bit correctly.

[00:14:41]Yes, that looks better.

[00:14:49]And you don't want to go too fast when drilling this plastic. I think it's like melting kind of.

[00:15:00]But it's it's very easy to drill. I don't know I I bought this pack of drills. It's Bosch or something, but they they they are they are quite nice. I think they can drill metallic through, so >> Okay, we're getting through.

[00:15:36]Okay, so that's a nice little hole, not exactly in the center, but that it doesn't matter that much.

[00:15:43]Um Let's see if we can focus up on that. [clears throat] So, we got the SMA connector. It's barely getting through. But, I think if we use the drill and just try to widen it a bit.

[00:16:15]We don't want to go too far, either.

[00:16:24]Yeah, it's getting through.

[00:16:48]Here's I'm going carefully with this because we're going to take too much eventually. So, you can already see the hole is getting a bit large. Okay, so I tried from the in- outside now.

[00:17:05]If I can get this out, we're going to push it in from the inside.

[00:17:13]And that works well.

[00:17:15]Looking nice.

[00:17:17]Let's get my I'm just going to use a locking washer here. But before we get any further, I'm going to put a Yeah, so before we install anything further, we're going to put some O-rings on this.

[00:17:40]I bought a box of assortment of O-rings from Amazon or something. I don't know if they're good in any way, but uh yeah.

[00:17:57]Normally, I take one or two of these small O-rings and put them on the inside here.

[00:18:06]The SMA connectors are not really made to be used outdoors, but well, what you going to do?

[00:18:17]So, we got one O-ring here. I'm going to put on another one.

[00:18:23]Sometimes when you tighten this, you they like bulge out.

[00:18:29]But if I use two, they normally get a tight seal.

[00:18:37]Looking good.

[00:18:41]Let's get this on.

[00:18:55]So, this is my 3D printed SMA tension tool.

[00:19:01]Um it's not my design, but uh I can link it in the description.

[00:19:24]So, >> [clears throat] >> it's not really sticking out as much as I would like. I guess the plastic is too thick or something or yeah.

[00:20:13]Yeah, so this is the tightest I could get it.

[00:20:16]Um you can screw an antenna on. I'm I'm not really sure how well that connection is going to be. So, it's a bit too short for my liking.

[00:20:26]If you look at the antenna, I think it's going to make contact, but it could be a weak connection.

[00:20:34]But, that's something we can look at later. I don't think these are made in any longer.

[00:20:40]Like I I have a couple here, I think.

[00:20:45]Got another one here.

[00:20:48]It's the same length.

[00:20:56]But, I guess it's because the inside is all rounded a bit here. So, could be that.

[00:21:06]So, let's just get this connected. I I don't think there will be any issue with that.

[00:21:14]But, a lot of things I do have to be redone, so that's why I'm calling my channel Iteration X because I have to iterate a lot when I build stuff. But, I that's what I like. I like to build stuff, and I like to come up with new ideas.

[00:21:39]So, for the rack here, we're also going to use a Bluetooth antenna.

[00:21:47]I think I have one laying around here.

[00:22:08]Yes, we got one of these.

[00:22:13]And we're going to connect it up.

[00:22:18]So, the Bluetooth is on this side.

[00:22:28]Got the Bluetooth.

[00:22:31]And I did try 3D printing something. Uh this is a holder, a clamp of sorts, that's going to hold down on the yeah, Bluetooth connector.

[00:22:47]Not really sure how well this is going to work, but we can try it out.

[00:22:57]I was planning on putting electrical tape over this, too.

[00:23:06]>> Okay, I will stop one.

[00:23:11]Maybe I put it on the wrong way.

[00:23:20]or not I think it's going over the top here and I mean, I guess it's not always the most well-designed products, but It appears to be in place. Let's check the lower side.

[00:24:07]Okay, so it held down much better on this side.

[00:24:10]I didn't really hear a hear a click or something. And that clicked off.

[00:24:15]With the Bluetooth side here, I'm not so worried about that.

[00:24:21]So, let's just do something like this.

[00:24:33]And we can wrap this in electrical tape.

[00:24:39]And that's mostly because I don't want to So, I'm just going to give it a couple of wraps here, not too too bad.

[00:25:10]And I want the Laura antenna to be held down.

[00:25:36]I just realized I taped over the connectors.

[00:25:41]That's stupid, I guess.

[00:25:55]Okay, so we got the connectors clear.

[00:25:58]Let's get the tape.

[00:26:05]Okay, so we got the module installed.

[00:26:10]I'm thinking it can sit up here in some way.

[00:26:18]That should work out.

[00:26:22]Also, we are going to remove half of the packing material to have room for our rack block module here.

[00:26:36]And it's a bit squishy, so that's okay.

[00:26:39]So, I'm going to install an antenna here.

[00:26:49]And we can start connecting the wires up.

[00:26:52]This is the battery module.

[00:26:55]I mean the battery connector.

[00:26:57]Um Yeah, so we got the battery connector installed.

[00:27:24]If I press the reset button, you can see a green flash if it's visible on camera here.

[00:27:31]This has been laying around for a while, so I don't I'm not sure if there is a lot of power in this.

[00:27:39]And we got the solar connector here.

[00:27:49]Okay.

[00:27:51]So, that's looking nice.

[00:27:56]So, now to the thing that where I was talking about in the beginning, when we are going to screw this on, the wires is going to twist too. So, that's going to be a bit annoying.

[00:28:12]So, what I'm thinking is that we are going to do something like this and twist it up in advance.

[00:28:22]Keep this one down.

[00:28:27]And now once I start screwing it on we are untwisting the wires.

[00:28:48]Something got caught on something.

[00:28:53]It looks like it's not hitting anything.

[00:29:03]Okay, we got it on.

[00:29:07]So, there we go. We got a solar node.

[00:29:14]And we can hang it outside or anything.

[00:29:23]So, to wrap this video up, I now have two solar nodes.

[00:29:28]Um I'm going to hang this outside and check the battery levels over time. We'll see. I can report back uh with a comparison.

[00:29:39]I think the seed module with the charger that I had, this one is it's a bit too it it demands more than the solar panels here can give.

[00:29:53]Um I think the rack module is more power efficient than the seed module. So, this could work a lot better. And since it has an integrated charging circuit, it could it could work better. I'm just guessing right now because I don't know.

[00:30:11]But, I'm going to hang this outside and um I may might make a um follow-up in some way on how this works out.

[00:30:25]So, thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.

[00:30:30]And if you like this video, please uh leave a like and subscribe. Uh also leave a comment. Just say hey or something.

[00:30:38]Bye.