Helpdesk

Hello :)

Right now we're using a Raspberry Pi Zero / Raspberry Pi 3A+ and a Witty Pi 4 for a solar powered remote camera system. It's powered by a solar driver and a 30Ah 12V LiFeP04 Battery. There's a USB LTE Dongle attached (that get's power even when the Pi is shut down, as it doesn't disable USB power in that state).

As we want to save energy at night, we need to gentely shut down the system at night ( 19:00 - 6:00 ).

We found StromPi and think about replacing the Witty Pi.

Requirements for our project:

• Scriptable startup / shutdown timer that cut's power completely (because of the dongle)


• Watchdog to make sure the raspberry Pi keeps restarting on crash


• Possibility to set voltage thresholds to shutdown / startup the Pi


• Possibility to read input voltage


• Buffering bad input power

Is the StromPi 3 suiteable for our project?

What other (dis-)advantages and differences are there between WittyPi and StromPi?

Hope to get some recommendations :)

Regards,

Moritz

Hello Moritz,
I'm not familiar with the Witty Pi4 myself, but I can give you information about the StromPi3.
The StromPi can be switched on and off at certain set times or at a certain set interval. When switched off, the power supply to the Raspberry Pi is interrupted.
Up to 3 different power sources can be connected to the StromPi. 5V microUSB, 6-61V wide range and our StromPi battery. The StromPi can be set so that it shuts down when a power supply fails and starts up again when the voltage returns. The input voltages can be read out via the StromPi, communication takes place via the serial interface (GPIO 14&15).

Best regards

Tim (Joy-IT)