Solar Energy and Raspberry Pi

“You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

I first discovered the ability to conserve solar energy with packs of batteries. I wanted to keep my iPhone charged during the hurricanes in Florida so I purchased a solar panel and battery from Voltaic Systems in New York. 

Since I lived in Florida, and enjoyed a neverending supply of solar, I found this to be quite convenient. So I wondered what other things could I charge with solar energy? 

I wanted to charge my Raspberry Pi with solar energy. So while I was working on my Raspberry Pi projects at Florida Atlantic University, and editing Pi projects for the book, Raspberry Pi By Example, I didn't find any solar projects, yet, that I wanted to work on. 

Currently, I was working on Internet of Things, but I wanted work on an outdoor nature cam, streamed on the internet, and paired with a solar powered Raspberry Pi! 

At Hacklab in North Boynton Beach, FL, where I had an internship for Daft Booth Raspberry Pi Project, as well as monitoring the Raspberry pi and Arduino Stations. I helped coordinate their solar workshops! This is where I learned how to use solar for baking things in a solar oven, and various other things about solar! I realized that I could plug in my Raspberry Pi, and rely on an Arduino to help conserve the power. 

 

Daft Booth@2015

A team from Hacklab and I were working on an outdoor nature camera project for a garden in Delray Beach and our goal was to monitor the wildlife at night, with a streamed web cam to a Internet Protocol address. 

Our project presented a problem to solve: I had to figure out how to pair Raspberry Pi model B with a video camera, and enough power from a solar panel battery and keep it on, and while plugged in, to protect its circuits, to program it to shut off when the solar battery was low. To solve this, I paired it with an Arduino to detect the level of the battery.  

After that, I wanted to work directly with energy and plants. I wanted to see if my Arduino could check the moisture of soil with an Arduino Soil Moisture Sensor and see of our plants needed watering! I workeed on this project at Hacklab and Delray Tech Space. 

That project led me to wonder how plants can conduct energy. So I played with Adafruits' Capacity Touch Projects and we plugged in bananas and used them as keys to the keyboard! We made music from touching fruit! This made me wonder if I could charge my Raspberry Pi with plant energy! 

This made me create a lot of questions and a lot of quests!! By plugging in the sensors into the soil, I wondered if we could charge the Raspberry Pi or Arduino with solar energy directly from the plants? Also, I wondered what cities we could design, build, conserve with solar energy or other materials that could reuse solar energy? 

Raspberry Pi, 2015 

In 2015, while earning my Master in Fine Arts in Media, Technology, and Entertainment at the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, I designed Orb City. 

Orb City was built with 3D software, Maya. I used built-in cameras to take screenshots at various angles, thus, producing a 2D print of Orb City. Using Adobe Photoshop, Orb City was created as a 2D print and showed at our Graduate Student Art Show at Florida Atlantic University, at School of Nursing, in Boca Raton, Florida in May 2015. 

Orb City is a futuristic city where humans grow vertical hydroponic farms and work in floating "plug and play" orb pods. Orb City conserves solar energy, and is charged only by solar, our infinite sustainable source of power. 

Torlen, Anna, editor. Raspberry Pi By Example. Packt Publishing, 2016. Buy On Amazon