n7qnm
Junior Member
Posts: 80 
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Post by n7qnm on Apr 7, 2022 8:55:59 GMT -8
We had a wind storm come though the other night - it snapped the solar panel mount right off the side of the enclosure!
The "bolt" top of the plug for the power leads snapped right at the bottom of the bolt. I built it with ASA at 80% infill.
Has anyone else seen this, or have any ideas for stronger mount?
Thanks in advance!
Clay
N7QNM
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Post by SDL on Apr 7, 2022 14:40:46 GMT -8
Clay,
Unless you got one of by mistake, we build all those bolts with 80% fill. One may have slipped through with 15% fill. Could you cut into and see if we screwed up?
BP
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n7qnm
Junior Member
Posts: 80
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Post by n7qnm on Apr 9, 2022 16:17:14 GMT -8
I'm building my own, using ASA as opposed to ABS, for better UV resistance. It's SUPPOSED to have the same strength characteristics as ABS. Based on the break, I'm pretty sure I got 80% infill.
I'm gonna try a couple of things - rebuilding the bolt and bracket at 90% infill and sanding the bolt a bit (when I screwed it into the 90 degree end of the bracket, it split the bracket, so I had to use the other bolt hole, which I expect put more torque on the bolt). I'm also gonna cut the bolt down so that it screws all the way into the bracket, and then epoxy the bolt to the bracket so it becomes one piece.
I'll keep you posted - this won't be the last windstorm we have here in the Tri-Cities :-).
BTW, the camera boards are working great - I have to order more ESP32 cameras, and the 12-5V converters, and then build the mount; but I'll send pics. Also need to order the Solar Max. If I have trouble with wind again, I might just do everything off the Solar Max with 12V cabling (long 5V cable runs just have too much voltage drop).
I'm getting there!
Clay
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Post by SDL on Apr 10, 2022 12:08:36 GMT -8
thank you! We wanted to make sure we didn't have a manufacturing problem there.
We are publishing a blog on SkyCam today about reseting the MQTT address if your server changes. We found this when our Netgear router rebooted and changed all the DHCP IP addresses and broke everything. We added a REST interface that allows us to reset the MQTT server IP and Port.
We also released a new version of SDL_ESP32_WeatherSenseSkyCam, V24, to address this issue. The article will tell you where to get the python software.
BP
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n7qnm
Junior Member
Posts: 80
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Post by n7qnm on Apr 10, 2022 14:44:50 GMT -8
Saw those - thanks! I'll keep you posted on my solar panel mount stuff.
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