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  • Author Author: jkutzsch
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IoT Farm: Blog 15 - F.O.C. followup.

jkutzsch

Going through my previous blog entries I realized I had not provided the followup information for my Farm Operations Center Box that I had previously said I would. 

 

So here it is!  :-)

 

As I had mentioned before the medium sized box worked perfectly as a container for the 7 inch touchscreen with Pi3 attached.

 

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As you can see here, the 4 squares line up perfectly with the metal frame of the touchscreen.  Making for an easy mounting of the F.O.C. to the plastic container.

 

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Here we have the view of Camera 2 moved over to monitor the Duck Domain.  With an easy swipe of a finger up or down I can look at any of the camera feeds!

 

 

From my top picture above you can see there is a good amount of space available to mount additional items including but not limited to batteries.  I had came across a very interesting sounding battery option with pass through capabilities advertised at Best Buy that I wanted to try.  Of course when I arrived there to purchase it there was none to be found.  Online it listed 3 in inventory, even the stores internal inventory listed 1, but after an hour of waiting and searching through Best Buy I ended up heading over to Walmart again to pick up a small usb battery. 

 

Sadly the idea of pass through charging only seems of interest to those with cell phones.  Trying to explain to various techs what exactly I needed in a battery led to a lot of confused looks and nothing that helped me for this project.

 

You would think the idea of having a power source that can charge your phone/tablet/micro usb item while also charging the battery would be a great thing to have.  Why bring a charger and a battery if you battery can also charge your device while charging itself?  Obviously a pass through battery would be quite nice to add into the F.O.C. box so I could just quickly pull the cord and head out to check things without having to power down and restart with the battery.

 

I did end up picking up a basic 4400 mah battery with the idea of testing, but while I was assured it had a 2.1 amp output the RPi3 with 7 inch screen was not impressed with its actual power providing and refused to work with just that battery.  So caveat to others, keep your receipts and packaging. 

 

Once I do find a pass through battery that works for my setup I will share out to Element 14.

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