The Electric Allotment

This is something I've been toying over for while now.

I would like to be able to power up the allotment for the purposes of running Wildlife Cameras and possibly a Weather Station.

There are a number of issues with wiring up an off-grid environment. Fortunately I have a repository of information about just such a thing to draw upon. The main issue is all around generating power, storing said power and of course, using it. Then throw in the final stage... communications.

Generating Power
The obvious choice for this is Solar power, after all, it's not as if I could get the allotment wired into the mains. Fortunately I do have a 12V solar panel. The obvious choice for this is to mount it inside the greenhouse to protect it against the wind and rain. This panel was originally intended to keep my car battery charged up, so it's not the most powerful. But it should be sufficient to power the plot, given that the computers intended to be used here are low powered.

Of course there is the issue surrounding the voltage. The panel produces 12V, but most of the electronics are rated at 5V, so there is definitely a need to step down the voltage in some manner. Now I also have a car adaptor designed to do just that. One of the benefit of stepping down the voltage, is that it also increases the current available.

Storing Power.
The quandary here is at what level do we store the charge? Should be use a spare car battery and store the charge at 12V, or do we use a battery power pack and store the charge at 5V. The main issue here is that to store the charge at 12V we would need additional equipment in the form of a charge controller to manage the battery correctly. This is obviously a bit more expensive. There is also the issue with having nasty lead/acid hanging around the plot. Not something which is nice to have. Also I think it might be against the allotment regulations. Alternatively I could go for a sealed gel battery, or one of the new lead/carbon batteries, but these seem like expensive options.

Never mind, I could instead choose to use a 5V battery power pack for the systems in question, simply because the necessary charge control is usually built in. However there is a further complication in that we would need to have a battery pack that will accept the incoming charge without question, and also be able to discharge without further involvement. Many smaller battery packs have an "on" button to deliver the charge to the devices in question, obviously this is not acceptable as we would need the system to be able to supply the charge to the device, and charge up independently of any inputs. So finding the right kind of battery pack is a must.

"Always on" power packs are few and far between. For safety's sake most disconnect the output when the cells are being recharged. What is needed is something dedicated to intermittent charges, as well as electronic usage. The only reliable format I have found is the Voltaic power packs. Reliable. Do the job. Just a tad expensive.

Using Power.
Finally we need to use the power by the end devices. A continuous supply is necessary to power the computing devices. An intermittent supply could probably be used by the mobile phone/router. So perhaps that device could be charged directly from the solar panel, and the computers via a rechargeable battery pack?

Communications.
Once you start generating data, no matter what type of data it is, you need to be able to use it. That either means a storage system where you can go and get the data as and when required, or better yet, a way to transmit it to the Internet and store it offsite. The easiest answer to this is to use a mobile phone with a data plan. The best option for this would be an Android phone with a data plan SIM. There is no need for phone calls to/from the plot, but a small data plan is obviously something which would be needed. It simplifies things immensely. The phone itself could also have it's own WiFi access point which would give any other devices a way of connect to it and through it to send the necessary data packets. Of course a mobile phone will also have it's own battery system which gives us a way of avoiding the issue with storing power directly for just this device.

There is also another possibility. There are special devices now which are low powered and are specific designed to offer a WiFi connection to the Internet. The R218 is just one such device. It has it's own battery (like a mobile) so the charging options are pretty similar. It allows up to 10 devices to be connected directly so ideal for a small number of computers to use it.

Computers.
So now we have a way of talking to the 'net, we need to be able to gather and process the data. To my mind there is only one choice of computer system, and that is a Raspberry Pi. These are extremely low powered computers with a small footprint. They are incredibly cheap (£4-£5 each) yet they carry a lot of computing power and can turn to almost any task. Many of the Pi varieties come with a WiFi adaptor already built in. This means that they can already communicate with the internet access point. The only thing that we need to do is install whatever software is needed and provide power.
There is also the issue of data storage. Obviously some data can be thrown up into the cloud (I already have my own Internet servers available) but the amount of upload really should be limited. It's not like I'd be streaming video. The Raspberry Pi devices use a small SD memory card. Given that the operating system and software for the Pi only uses up around 1Gb, using something like an 8Gb memory card means that there is more than sufficient storage available. So some photos and video could be stored locally and retrieved when I visit the plot. Whereas still images and "triggers" could be uploaded immediately to the Internet. If necessary I could remotely request footage to be uploaded. For example if vandals made a mess of the plot, the still image triggers could be uploaded, these would be sent to my mobile phone, I could then request the rest of the footage before they wrecked the place or stole the devices.

A better option may be to have a central, hidden, system used purely for storage of the media. The image servers would send the files to the storage server. This means that the image servers would be less susceptible to any possible damage and could be easily replaced. The total cost of such servers, including the camera, would be less than £10.

Weather Station.
There are a number of options here. There are plenty small home brewed weather station hardware that is already on the market. These are ideally suited to this kind of setup.
Ideally there are a number of sensors that would be useful.

• Wind speed
• Wind direction
• Rain gauge
• Temperature (air)
• Temperature (ground)
• Temperature (greenhouses)
• Solar intensity measurement and UV.
• Barometric (Air pressure)

Wildlife/Security Cameras.
The Raspberry Pi has cameras. Of course here the main issue is that there is no kind of housing for the devices as they are intended for hobbyists to use, so either they need to be located in a dry area (Greenhouse?) or I'd need to build some kind of secure and rainproof housing for them.
There already exists software for these systems. They rely on taking periodic pictures and comparing them to a control image. If a significant portion of the image has changed then the system starts recording from that point.

Data Storage
Obviously not all data will be immediately transmitted to the 'net. As mentioned above, there needs to be an area where the data could be stored until needed later. The most obvious choice for storage would be a simple USB memory stick. Fortunately I have a goodly amount of those things hanging around spare.

Layout and positioning
The Internet connection and Storage Server should be located in a safe area. Ideally inside the shed where it would be locked away from prying eyes and thieving fingers. The WiFi connection is not really too much of an issue given that it will easily cover the are of the plot. It may even be sufficient to allow for cameras to be installed at other locations on adjacent plots. Perhaps one covering the Car Park and entrance way? I'd have to check with the plot holders in question. The only issue would be supplying the necessary power to said devices.

Shop Keepers New Year Meetup

We have a shop at the allotment, and a large number of people give up a couple of hours of their time to man the shop. We normally have a christmas meetup, but due to one thing or another we didn't manage to get it scheduled, so instead we shifted it to a New Year's meetup instead.

Much gossip, tea, coffee, and assorted goodies were had by all.

I also took a quick trip over to the plot. And although things have dried out a bit, it's still too cold and damp to be able to do any real work there.

So instead I'm comforting myself with ordering seeds and making plans for the year. Maybe I'll take the whole of April off work and get it all sorted out.

End of year roundup

Another year rolls around and we seem to be ending the year on a damp note.

This year has been very "challenging". Most notably because of the serious health issues I faced this year. At one point I was only a few hours away from death and it took a long while to recover. However it has shown that in the face of adversity then a lot of help can be had from friends.

I would particularly like to thank Michael for his offer of help which we gladly took him up on. His work allowed us to keep on top of things and make sure that the plot did not get too badly overrun. Also I'd like to thank Richard and Annette. We've been feeding them spare courgettes and beetroots for years so we made sure that their help in dealing with the plot will keep them in courgettes for years to come.
I'd also like to express my appreciation to other plotholders who all enquired after my health throughout the year.

So how did the year go?
January - Frankly, nothing doing. Only basic visits to drop off our home organic waste into the compost bins. Nothing worth blogging about.
February - Starting to get the plot into shape ready for the year. Culling weeds and cleaning. This is possibly the start of where everything went wrong.
March - We started planting. I broke our old garden fork back in 2018 so this was the first chance of using the new one, an all steel construct, which was far sturdier than the previous one. It made short work of the beds. But we did manage to get our seeds started.

April - This is where things started going downhill rapidly. I had been coughing for a couple of weeks. I am a severe asthmatic so I really didn't give this much thought as it is common for me to have breathing problems from time to time. Especially living in London - the only place you can get your daily intake of minerals in one breath. So when I took a week off work to do an Allotment Week, I didn't manage to complete it.
May - This was my first hospitalisation of the year. I saw one of the leading lung specialists who immediately admitted me to the Royal Brompton hospital. I spent a week in there on some pretty high strength anti-biotics, undergoing daily blood tests, a CT scan and lung tests. Overall I left hospital a week later with a different medicine regime (actually the new medicines have worked really well) and a gradually reducing steroid programme.
June - Very weak still and trying to recover. However the last week of June saw me rushed into hospital almost at Death's Door. My wife managed to keep the plot alive, but she was far more worried about me than the plot.
July - Meh. I did absolutely nothing but try and live throughout July. We didn't pot things up properly, nor keep up with watering. So the plot from here on out was pretty much neglected. Anything that did manage to survive this neglect was tough and resilient.
August - I did manage to get back to the plot but it was pretty much a weed infested jungle. The courgettes were not performing as well as hoped, but they did produce some. The beans did generate some results, as did the Patty-pans.
September - It was during this month that I started doing pulmonary rehab at St. Georges in an effort to try and get back to reasonable shape. The change of medicine from my Royal Brompton stint, and the rehab has worked wonders. But sadly the plot by this time was seriously neglected.
October - December - with nothing doing on the plot now, we pretty much left it alone and concentrated on getting my health back.

I'm glad to say that I am now fully recovered. I can now blow over 500ml on my peak flow (which is pretty good for me) and now use less salbutamol than ever before.

There is a lot of work to be done on the plot to get it ready for planting again. Weeds must be pulled. Paths must be replaced. And the rear of the plot which hasn't been touched for a couple of years will definitely have to be sorted out before the Committee start complaining.

Walking in a Water Wonderland

It's been raining a bit.

OK, amend that. It's been raining a lot and as you may well remember from earlier times, our plot is on top of London clay, so that means it collects water every time that there is a small flood. So I was fully expecting it to be a little wet when we visited today.

Of course the greenhouse, being on the lowest part of the plot gets the brunt of it of often gets flooded. Here it looks like there are dry parts, but that is because the weed membrane has risen up in the flood. Step on it and it squelches down about 6 inches.

But the rest of the lower part is also fully under water.

As is the new addition where last year we had the courgettes growing.

As I said last time, maybe I should take up rice growing. They're perfect paddy fields.

All quiet on the Eastern Front

It's a little quiet round here these days.

No I haven't been ill again. I'm really feeling a lot better. The pulmonary rehab that I'm doing at the hospital these last few weeks has really helped. I'm feeling so much better now. And the change of medicines has done wonders. I've gone from using my sulbutamol two or three times a days to two or three times a week. At my last assessment I managed to blow 500ml on my peak flow test. So yes, I am really feeling much, much better.

No, the reason why it's so quiet is that we just don't have anything left at the allotment that's worthy. The only trips we do is to empty the weeks bio-rubbish into the compost heap. So today's little trip was a quick flying visit during a break in the rain.

We had a frost at the start of the week, and that killed a lot of the remaining plants. The Morning Glories are now sadly done for, and the high winds we've had a while back has ruined the arch.

The rest of the plot is now rather a damp bedraggled mess. If this rain ever lets up for a weekend I might be able to get round to clearing it up a bit.

In the greenhouses the frost has ended some of the chillies. But you might just spot a bit of red in there of a couple of the chillies that have actually matured. I don't know whether you can use green chillies in the same manner, but there are quite a few of them still in there.

Other than that, there is not much to do at this time of year. Maybe if I wasn't so ill during the main part of the year, then there may be something worth having. Still, there is always next year. Time to hit the online seed shops and dream of a better tomorrow.