Modular Solar-Powered IoT Sensors

Bringing a product to market is not easy, if it were everyone would be doing it, and succeeding. The team at Pycno is in the process of launching their second product, a modular solar powered IoT unit called Pulse. It’s always interesting to get an inside look when a company …read more

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Building a Low-Tech Website for Energy Efficiency

In an age of flashy jQuery scripts and bulky JavaScript front-end frameworks, loading a “lite” website is like a breath of fresh air. When most of us think of lightweight sites, though, our mind goes to old-style pure HTML and CSS sites or the intentionally barebones websites of developers and …read more

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ESP32 Makes Great MPPT Controller in Low-Cost Solar Installation

Solar power projects have become, in general, a matter of selecting components like panels and batteries, hooking them together with industry-standard connectors, and sitting back to watch the free electricity flow. As such, solar projects have become a bit boring, so it’s not often we see one that attracts our …read more

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Solar Powered Weeding Tractor Uses Manual Labour

You might not have realised this, but there’s a group of hackers out there without whom you wouldn’t be able to put food on the table. They hack under the blazing sun and pouring rain, and have been doing it for thousands of years. Known more commonly as farmers, their …read more

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Soaring with the Sun: 4 Years of Solar RC Planes

Many of us have projects that end up spanning multiples years and multiple iterations, and gets revisited every time inspiration strikes and you’ve forgotten just how much work and frustration the previous round was. For [Daniel Riley] AKA [rctestflight] that project is a solar powered RC plane which to date …read more

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Tacking Against The Sun: Flying A Batteryless Solar RC Plane Is Almost Like Sailing

Flying on the power of the sun is definitely not a new idea, but it usually involves a battery between the solar panels and the propulsion system. [ukanduit] decided to lose the battery completely and control the speed of the motor with the output of the solar panels. This leads …read more

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Is Solar Right for You? Find Out!

Solar panels are revolutionizing the electric power industry, but not everyone is a good candidate for rooftop solar. Obviously people in extreme northern or sothern latitudes aren’t going to be making a ton of energy during the winter compared to people living closer to the equator, for example, but there …read more

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Solar-Harvesting Blinkenlights

A few years ago a fad ripped through the makersphere where people would build cheap, solar powered LED blinkers, glue a magnet to them, and throw them on anything metal. It was an interesting time, but luckily did not last for too long. With some effort and craftsmanship, though, the …read more

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Soak up the Sun with this 3D Printed Solar Harvester

At first glance, adding solar power to your project might seem easy. Get a photovoltaic panel, point it towards the big ball of burning gas in the sky, and off you go. But in reality, there’s a bit more to it than that. Especially when you’re trying to do something …read more

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Keeping Birds At Bay With An Automated Spinning Owl

There’s nothing wrong with building something just to build it, but there’s something especially satisfying about being able to solve a real-world problem with a piece of gear you’ve designed and fabricated. When all the traditional methods to keep birds from roosting on his mother’s property failed, [MNMakerMan] decided to …read more

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