[Live_Steam_Mad]

As an example, here are some pictures of the system used by me for powering the TX unit installed on the roof.
The same waterproof case, houses the TX unit.

10 Watt solar panel

Ahh I was wondering about which battery you used and I didn't recognise the Yuasa model used, so I had a look on Ebay and saw that REW45-12 was 32 GBP! Then I looked up it's datasheet and found that it was merely a 12V 7Ah Sealed Lead Acid battery from Yuasa, virtually the same specifications (from a quick look) as my own three lots of 12V 7A Yuasa NP7-12 that I use for charging Radio Controlled buggies in the field, and for use with my telescope mounts and anti-dew heaters etc. So I can use one of those. They are about 15 GBP on Ebay, I bought mine from a local model shop (not many of those left now, unfortunately) for about 10 GBP per battery just a few years ago.

I found the PWM Solar Charge Controller (combined Solar Panel Battery charger / regulator on Ebay for 8.25 GBP) so know where to buy one now when I need one. 10W solar panels are about 8 GBP from Ebay.

I wasn't aware that the transmitter used so much power. Since the Arduino is a RISC based CPU then I can't imagine it's using hardly any power at 16 MHz, so most of the power used is being used by the transmissions themselves since the unit is transmitting much more frequently than the e.g. Fine Offset 1080 which goes for about 18 months on 2 AA Alkaline power cells. And / or a significant fraction of the power use is caused by running the PCB on board regulator at 12V instead of 9V (I saw a heatsink on one of the PCB's, can't remember if it was the TX or RX or both). That's my guess.

In my case I'll have to put the SLA battery in a plastic box in the gap between my wooden and brick sheds, and fasten the solar panel to the roof or south side of my wooden shed.

Here's my existing setup with my Fine Offset WH-1081 ;-

http://www.wunderground.com/personal-wea...ENGLAND609

(click on About this PWS for a picture)

Regards,

Alistair G.