Recently downloaded the phyphox from F-Droid and thought about this while thinking about what all stuff I could do with it.

Are there any online resources about such stuff?

What all things have you(or people you know, in your locality etc) done along that line?
And not only big thigs, if you’re tracking other stuff, please do share your experience on that too.

Edit:
Sharing the github page of the app too:
https://github.com/phyphox/phyphox-android

  • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 days ago

    I build an off-grid solar power set on my back yard and tracked it’s results for two years. It was only 500W in 3 directions (east, south and west)

    It first charged the batteries and then used the rest to heat water if no direct use was present.

    Learned a lot and noticed that many ideas and mental images about it were bullshit. Still usefull if applied to right applications.

    Not gonna buy a bigger set and will use the existing ones to just heat water till they give up.

      • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        I’m using 220V/6kW heating element. When used with 60VDC directly from the panels, it’s about 0,45kW. No need for control system, since that is too weak to bring the water to boil. It’s function is just to decrease the consumption of heating oil. Oil burner is set to start at eavening just before enyone needs hot water and panel output goes down. Oil burner heats the water in the tank to 80ºC. It’s about 40-60ºC next morning when the sun rises, depending on the consumption.

          • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 days ago

            At first yes, and I was planning to put raspberry + HAL-sensor + relay to handle the switch when average current to the batteries lowered, but to my surprise batteries charged enough with both connected. Battery charge controller is right next to the panels and there is some distance to the heating element. It appears that the MPPT battery charge controller so much lower resistance path that the current favors it.

            My test setup only has 300Ah of battery, capacity at 12V, so it’s charged quite quickly. Battery power only runs living room devices 50" TV, monitor, laptop, steamdeck, cable modem that are used about 4-6h a day and rarely on at the same time.

            If it’s a hot summers day, I might manually direct all to AC

            … or if there’s some catastrophic blackout during winter I can connect batteries to a radiator water circulation pump and heat the home by burning wood. This is very improbable, but at least there’s something.