I find myself getting involved in more hardware-related installations, and therefore need to do quite often research into sound, watts, power requirements, mounting racks, rotary encoders, solar panels, etc. …
I usually love searching the openframeworks forum, and you tend to find non-software topics touching upon cameras, arduinos, etc. but it’s lacking the nitty-gritty tech stuff.
Does anyone have suggestions for similar places like the OFW forum, but with more of a focus onto hardware? Any good forums or mailing lists, where one can go ask amateur / beginners questions, and also can give back by sharing one’s own knowledge?
Right now i am trying to figure out, how to best plan an outdoor sound-installation powered by the sun. It’s really hard to judge the average power-consumption of amplifiers+speakerss, as the consumption level changes with the sound being played. Also, apparently there are amps that have a higher efficiency which would be ideal for saving power (type A amps?).
Did you every work with sound (good quality, >100W) and solar panels?
Some experience reports + specs would be a great help!
Hey , sorry no , i did not work with such power. But it should not be so difficult. I advise you to firstly estimated the power you need.
You use your power amplifier and sounds connected to real power supply ( i mean not a battery )
and mesure the power consummed.
Once you have it , you search over the net fo professional kits solar panel + batteries, that will be able to provide this amount of energy depending on the recharge time.
Also usually professional amplifier use 110 or 220 V and solar panel and batteries will provide 12V or 24 V or 48 V . so you should adapt one to the other, probably remove from the amplifier the transformer 220V to desired power , and try to find solar panel that will directly provide this desired power.
By desired power , i mean that usually electronics will work in 12 Volts or 5 volts ( more likely 5 volts ) Probably your amplifier will work in 5 volt so at entrance you have a transformer 220V AC to 5 V DC that you will remove or replace by a transformer 12V to 5 V
anyway you have to avoid all voltage transformation wich is energy loss
i have been working on solar panels , batteries , leds , microcontrolers …