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Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Solar powered Android running BOINC |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 14
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uclajd
Cruncher Joined: Aug 18, 2006 Post Count: 3 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi all,
----------------------------------------I just wanted to share a little project I have been running. I have an old LG Android phone that I have tethered to a portable USB solar panel running WCG/BOINC. The LG runs BOINC all day an into the night. It charges via the solar panel during the day, and manages to also charge itself well enough to get to 100%. I'm actually not sure how long it runs at night, but I have BOINC set to run on battery until it gets down to 20%. It stays alive until the sun comes up the next morning. I've been doing it off and on (mostly off lately because of bad weather) for over a year. I can't even get T-mobile to unlock it, so I just use it over wi-fi. I'm curious if there is a battery pack/solar combo that would let the phone run off of solar during the day and battery at night (but could both charge the battery and run the phone during the day?)  I know mobile phones aren't the most powerful of platforms, but I think it's a fun proof of concept for truly "free" CPU cycles. I had bought the phone on eBay as a cheap burner phone and to test BOINC on it (I use an iPhone for mobile) since they use so little power, but T-Mobile jerks won't unlock it. Then I realized that I had this portable solar panel for the beach and other travel, so I thought I'd try the two together. You can get them pretty cheap on sale on Amazon. I'd imagine some of the more powerful mobile CPUs would draw too much power for this, but who knows? I have a Moto E6 I'm going to try with a slightly more powerful portable solar panel I have. At some point I'd like to do a small off-grid roof mounted solar array that I could use for my laptop, which is an i9 with 8 cores and robust GPU (RTX 2080 @ 990mhz). But it would need some external batteries to keep going overnight (240W power supply!  ). Plus HOA hassles to approve solar. Maybe I could do a panel or two on my balcony and just use it during daytime.I think I'll start with a solar powered laptop cooler. This thing gets HOT when crunching all 8 cores and the GPU!   [Edit 1 times, last edit by uclajd at May 2, 2020 6:21:59 PM] |
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yoerik
Senior Cruncher Canada Joined: Mar 24, 2020 Post Count: 413 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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that is really cool! Got my imagination ticking - I couldn't do something like this now, but in the future... thank you for sharing!
---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by yoerik at May 2, 2020 6:19:27 PM] |
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3315 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I also have a similar USB solar charger. I've seen charge at 1.3A per AccuBattery.
----------------------------------------Haven't tried it much with BOINC on a phone but I remember it didn't do so well. I'll try again one of these days.  - AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W - AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W - AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz |
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supdood
Senior Cruncher USA Joined: Aug 6, 2015 Post Count: 333 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I have the same phone in my bank of Android crunchers. A few words of warning:
----------------------------------------1. I'm assuming that you just put the phone next to the panels for the picture and that it isn't usually overheating in the sun. Just checking! 2. Running 4/4 cores and cycling the battery between 100% and 20% each day is going to put a lot of strain on the battery. Keep an eye out for battery swelling as it is a clear indication that failure and runaway thermal reaction are close at hand. 3. I've found that running 3/4 cores leads to better results due to the low RAM on this phone. |
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uclajd
Cruncher Joined: Aug 18, 2006 Post Count: 3 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I have the same phone in my bank of Android crunchers. A few words of warning: 1. I'm assuming that you just put the phone next to the panels for the picture and that it isn't usually overheating in the sun. Just checking! 2. Running 4/4 cores and cycling the battery between 100% and 20% each day is going to put a lot of strain on the battery. Keep an eye out for battery swelling as it is a clear indication that failure and runaway thermal reaction are close at hand. 3. I've found that running 3/4 cores leads to better results due to the low RAM on this phone. Good info, thanks. Yeah, I hide the phone from the sun as best I can. I'm going to buy some long USB cords (which I already use for Waze cameras) so the phone can be inside. Maybe I'll raise the battery to 50%. I did want to check how long it will crunch on battery power only. I dropped it to 3/4 cores.  I'm wondering if anyone has a chart of BOINC devices based on WU's per watt. I'll bet high end Androids stack up pretty well. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
If your phone has the capability to use it, you can get a on-the-go to ethernet or micro usb to ethernet adapter pretty cheap. It might save some juice since you'll be able to turn off the wireless. { The power the wireless uses when not actually sending data. }
----------------------------------------[Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at May 2, 2020 9:14:22 PM] |
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Glen David Short
Senior Cruncher Joined: Nov 6, 2008 Post Count: 192 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Ingenious!
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MrHasselblad
Cruncher Joined: Dec 20, 2014 Post Count: 42 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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This is actually very impressive for the budget.
Once the virus issue happens to blow over further... I'll post photographs and stats of my 5,5oo watt solar/battery system |
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jackielan2000
Advanced Cruncher China Joined: Dec 31, 2005 Post Count: 115 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Seems like you are using the same solar panel and setting I once used. It would charge the phone quite quickly without the crunching and slowly w/ the crunching as you described. I don't know how many cores your phones has but even with 1 core running, the juice would run out quite fast. The main problem is that using phone battery like this would shorten the lifespan of it, which costs more for replacing. So, I suggest you get a 10000mA or even 20000mA power-bank, charge it alongside the phone in day time and use it as power supply at night. But, you need to switch manually.
----------------------------------------Speaking of the waste generated by using power bank, well, I used one made of second-hand battery cells, which came from the depleted battery of my e-bike. My dream is to build something like this but at a larger scale, an environment friendly Android crunching farm with 100 phones at least, powered by solar panel or wind. 
AMD Athlon64X2 5400+ 2.8G | 2c
MT6735 1.4G | 4c Helio G85 1.8G |8c Allwinner H2 1G | 4c SnapDragon 810 2.1G | 8c SnapDragon 801 2.5G | 4c |
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