The Z-Power Management Board is a Meshtastic enabled , ‘smart’, IoT product to provide portable,temporary, re-chargable, managed 12v Power and MQTT control to a variety of sensors or power consuming devices.
Example ‘power consumer’ use cases include:
- Temporary (emergency?) Repeater power for HamRadio / SOTA activation
- An easily deployed, long-duration, remote sensor ( i.e. Water pH & Temperature in a largely inaccessible stream) that can operate for weeks at a time, and can be quickly replaced/recharged (through intervention?) without interruption.
- The ‘Parking Attendant’: A Raspi controlled-PTZ camera with Raspi Object Detection / License Plate recognition (w/ real-time Mesh Reporting ) at a special event ( outdoor concert, NASCAR race, etc) or private lot ( construction site, hunting lodge, etc).
The beauty of the Meshtastic enabled Z-Power managed remote power solution is: it can leverage/manage solar, but doesn’t have to be sized as large as an un-managed power management system is. If the battery storage is below a threshold and more cloudy weather is eminent … this solution will allow a battery swap OR re-charge WITHOUT interruption as it will support additional external (LiFePo) batteries.
In the interest of extreme (backpack) portability, the Z-Power management board provides self-contained LiPo battery and a ‘keyhole’ module plug that will expose the Meshtastic ESP32 pins to provide open expandability. The Z-Power management board leverages a serial-parallel (74595 ) output bus to provide power-management, LED indicators, and an ‘unlimited’ number of channels through daisy-chaining. PWM is available (has been tested with 16 channels on Arduino UNO at 16 PWM levels (which provides smooth dimming) ), but may be limited (especially with longer ‘daisy-chains’).
What is the state of the board ?
Prototype Circuit boards are being tested.
We have working Arduino code / libraries to control the internal circuits ( 3ea ADS1015 ADC sensors and a multi-chain 74HC595 serial-parallel bus). We Need assistance from a more experienced MeshTastic developer to provide guidance on our draft PlatformIO code. We will offer a free prototype Z-Power system to someone who can review / correct our code.
Looking for guidance on a method to incorporate the serial-parallel output bus into a ‘Meshtastic friendly’ module.