Question Context
Our pi's are going to run off of battery, meaning, we need to conserve as much power as possible. Since the birds we are researching (chickadees) mainly feed during the day we do not need to run the pi at night. Our goal is to only run the pi during the day. We considered using a photoresistor but would prefer to use something more reliable. We need the pi to turn on at least an hour before daylight to catch early feeders and we don't want the photoresistor to get covered by the snow (we get a lot of snow!). right now our best option seems to be setting up some type of separate circuit between the pi and the battery using a combination of the following: RTC, Microcontroller (looking at the Adafruit Trinkit), Solid State Relay, or some kind of Timer IC. I have absolutely zero experience with managing power or using RTC's, SSR's, or Timer IC's and am having trouble choosing which component / methodology to use.
Tech Specs
Our nodes are currently equipped with:
Our pi's are going to run off of battery, meaning, we need to conserve as much power as possible. Since the birds we are researching (chickadees) mainly feed during the day we do not need to run the pi at night. Our goal is to only run the pi during the day. We considered using a photoresistor but would prefer to use something more reliable. We need the pi to turn on at least an hour before daylight to catch early feeders and we don't want the photoresistor to get covered by the snow (we get a lot of snow!). right now our best option seems to be setting up some type of separate circuit between the pi and the battery using a combination of the following: RTC, Microcontroller (looking at the Adafruit Trinkit), Solid State Relay, or some kind of Timer IC. I have absolutely zero experience with managing power or using RTC's, SSR's, or Timer IC's and am having trouble choosing which component / methodology to use.
Tech Specs
Our nodes are currently equipped with:
- Raspberry pi zero W
- Dragino LoRa Module
- RFID sensor
- Weight sensor
- DC-DC converter
- 15Ah lead acid battery