Hi Marcus,

We don’t have a log of the battery capacity. From memory, most of the times we went up there I remember seeing 3 lights. It was a pretty nasty, overcast winter, but the panel was on the roof and had very little obstruction except for one building for about an hour a day and the Manhattan Bridge at the very end of the day.

Hey Julia,

Glad you liked it.

I’ve used both IV and PS and the IV’s learning curve is definitely smaller, but the PS’s more convenient if you can get it dialed in–and you don’t want to have to go through and purge the night shots manually (or write a script to automatically delete files between certain times).

If you take photos, rather than video, you can stitch them together for the same effect using a lot less space on the card.

The GPH2’s 5mp wide photos end up around 2.5-3mb ea and the 11mp wide end up at about 5-6mb ea. With a 32GB card, taking 11mp/w photos every 10 minutes (24 hours a day) you can take about 37 day’s worth of photos before you have to replace the card. You can double those days by using the 5mp/w.

You’re right, we don’t have the center hole panel up on the site–eeeeep! We’re about to launch a new site that’s–technically speaking–one million times better. In the interim if you’re trying to get your hands on the center hole panel ASAP you can just order a 3.5 kit (https://voltaicsystems.com/solar-panel-kits/) and note you want a center hole panel.

Like Jeff mentioned, the enclosure will hold the V15, GP and there’s probably even enough space for some jelly beans.

If you have any more questions, give us a shout.

Daniel

I find the the intervalometer a bit easier to program but it also means you’re taking nighttime shots that you might have to edit out later.

The 4 Watts should be fine. The enclosure holds the V15 and the GoPro.

Jeff

I am trying to decide which one to add on – the intervalometer or programmable scheduler. Our shoot is of a bridge installation so we don’t need night time shots but the GoPro only allows for 60 second shots as the longest time interval which is overkill for what I need.

I didn’t see the “Voltaic 3.4 watt center hole solar panel” on their site. They are only showing the 4 watt solar charging kit. Will that suffice? Not sure how to mount it. Does the Cam-Do enclosure house the V15 battery AND the GoPro? Sorry for so many questions but I couldn’t tell from your photos.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hey Ben,

I agree about the hardware stores, the weirder the better.

The shadow… I’m not sure exactly. I read this comment and watched the video and I saw it too.

First thing I did was check the file dates from the Nov 20th until the 26th again to make sure I didn’t miss anything. They were all accounted for. In my original post it said 20 minutes apart, but it was actually only 10 min–I corrected the post.

Then I went through frame by frame. What I’m guessing happened, by looking at the contextual clues (cars, position of equipment on the site, etc.) is that when I was removing the night frames I took out one extra that appeared too dim in the thumbnail. When I did this the transition from day to day wasn’t apparent so it looked like it was simply jumping back within the same day. The last frame, before it appears to jump back to the beginning of a new day around 07:15-07:30, was at about 16:15 with the sun set that day around 16:30 so the last clip would’ve been dim as the sun was already behind the Manhattan Bridge.

Unfortunately the GPH2 doesn’t have a time stamp overlay option so I’ll probably add it manually next time. If you have any other questions, holler.

Why does the shadow motion switch direction at the 35 second mark?

Nice proof of concept.