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Electronics
Electronics
Most of the electronics were purchased new (along with some backups/spares) but all of the terminal blocks and fuse block were sitting around waiting for a purpose.
General Build
General Build
We started by figuring out what we needed to power (lights, amplifier, headphones, radio) and documented their power requirements in our electrical budget. Because some devices like the amplifier were overkill, instead of using their max power requirement we instead measured their current draw.
Once we had all of the power requirements we sized the batteries and solar panels (we ended up oversizing them to be safe... the specs below are overkill)
Solar panels: 400W
Solar Charge Controller: 40A MPPT
Batteries: 187Ah of 12V deep cycle
Audio: 400W amplifier with 4 speakers and 4 sets of headphones (from a separate headphone amplifier)
Aux power input: 120V to 12V, 500W power supply
To save power we used photovoltaic switches that turned off their loads when they sensed light. This way we could maximize charging during the day and only turn on all of the lights when it got dark.
The components were spaced out in an attempt to reduce crosstalk/interference, and this spacing meant putting components on two different wood panels. This split necessitated the use of terminal blocks to make disconnecting and connecting everything trivial.
The sound check
The sound check
We needed to make sure the system worked - solar generated power, power went to the right spot, we could hear lightning, and there was limited feedback from our lighting plan. So, we drove an hour into the desert out to Stansbury Island to avoid interference from the power grid and tested the system.
Many of these wires stayed coiled until the burn as they weren't needed for the limited test
We brought out 50% of the solar panels to check the charge controller
We brought out 50% of the batteries as our power supply
It sounded better than it looked 😛
This waterfall plot shows the peaks from the lightning, but also showed us clear horizontal bands where our lights and other devices were interfering
Turns out this interference wasn't from radio waves, but was instead a 16kHz ripple in the power supply caused by the LED driver for the lightning bolt lights. We tried adding a filter in circuit, but ended up bringing out separate batteries for the VLF receiver to (nearly) wholly side-step the problem
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