diy solar

diy solar

Stolen solar panels?

i use a cable and padlock mine together. my boxer/can corso mixed dog sitting outside near his panels usually keeps most people honest.
love the electronic collars.
 
Theft and vandalism is one of my main concern, since I am operating environmental measuring stations unattended on the public domain or someone else's property.
I am happy when I get the authorization to use a roof on a barn, more rarely to mount the panel on a pole.
 
If you are gone for any length of time, the thief has all the time they need to get past your best efforts. The pony way to be certain is to take them with you.
 
Make a box with a battery, small relay and horn. Connect the battery lead to the horn through the normally closed contacts on the relay and a switch. Connect the relay coil to the battery through a long length of wire that can be threaded through a hole in each panel. If the wire gets cut the horn goes off.
 
Howdy,

Twenty years ago I installed 10 BP75 panels at my remote site in Western Wa.

I drilled holes thru each panel and ran a single wire thru all the panels.

I connected the wire to a cheap ebay Auto alarm with a large alarm speaker.

In ten years the alarm went off twice. And the panels are still there.....

BTW, using the Auto Alarm will turn off the alarm after 90 seconds or so.

Now that we have cellular in the area, I use the same wire connected to a home brew cellular linked system, that reports alarm status plus a bunch more.

Good luck....
 
RJuelfs said:
If you are gone for any length of time, the thief has all the time they need to get past your best efforts. The pony way to be certain is to take them with you.
Click to expand...
Problem becomes.... the panels don't charge the TT batt very well, if I don't leave the panels with the TT.
 
deeuubee said:
Thought this would be a good idea until I saw it's only a 400 ft range.
Click to expand...
Are you kidding me? I left a tile protected device in a hotel 5 hours from my home. tracking showed that it was still at the hotel. One phone call and it was shipped back to me.
 
grizzzman said:
Are you kidding me? I left a tile protected device in a hotel 5 hours from my home. tracking showed that it was still at the hotel. One phone call and it was shipped back to me.
Click to expand...

I don't own one or know much about them: just what they told me on the phone.
If it's out of range, the app will tell you the last known location. Maybe that what happened in your case.
Then again, they said that you can turn on "notify when found", but
that requires someone else who has one passing by in range to anonymously connect to it and send info back.
In all, it's a great idea. I'm sure there are other options.
I guess it depends on how much you want to spend to protect it.
Hopefully my camera will pick up their license plate :)
 
You can also get a carbide pen and etch your name, or code number, on your panels to ID them if they are stolen. A carbide pen works on plastic, metal, glass, ceramic, all kinds of things. Permanent ink COULD be washed off by solvents, although not completely in many cases.

Sometimes I use the first 6 digits of my driver's license ID as the secret number to etch.

Can you mount the panels on your roof to make them harder to get at? Thieves just want an easy steal.
 
ArthurEld said:
What does the 400 ft range mean?
Click to expand...
Tile does not transmit to the internet directly. It is a crowd source Blue Tooth transmitter. When you down load the Tile app on your phone, your phone constantly searches for Tile signals. As you walk by a Tile, your phone transmits its location. If you loose (or get stolen) a Tile protected device, you must depend upon a random person with Tile, randomly being in the vicinity of your protected item to know where it is. If your item is stolen by someone that does not have tile. And they take it to a location where no one has Tile. You will never know where it is.
 
According to my tile app there are 2503 tile apps in current range in this town.
 
ArthurEld said:
What does the 400 ft range mean?
Click to expand...
The tile device is just a bluetooth beacon.

Phones hear the bluetooth beacon broadcast, activate the phone’s GPS to acquire a location fix, and then associate the bluetooth beacon information with the phone’s GPS lock. Uploading this data to the internet allows for community search and rescue operations.

The tile itself does not contain a GPS receiver; the phone connecting to it does. Hopefully the thief would also have tile app installed on their phone and uploading to the internet ?
 
I need to learn more about the network aspect; it seems much better than nothing, that’s for sure.

It’s no spy movie global satellite tracker, but I’m still glad to know about it.

Incidentally ios device also operate a similar thing for find without direct internet access.
 
grizzzman said:
According to my tile app there are 2503 tile apps in current range in this town.
Click to expand...
so... I would bet most towns have a whole lot more than 2,503 acres. But if there was one Tile phone per acre, your tile would not show up. The reality is, dozens or hundreds are probably scattered within the same small high population area. But there will be VERY VAST areas with no tiles.

Kinda like where folks camp. So if another boondocker stole my panels, I would never see them again if I was depending on Tile
 
Mike Jordan said:
so... I would bet most towns have a whole lot more than 2,503 acres. But if there was one Tile phone per acre, your tile would not show up. The reality is, dozens or hundreds are probably scattered within the same small high population area. But there will be VERY VAST areas with no tiles.

Kinda like where folks camp. So if another boondocker stole my panels, I would never see them again if I was depending on Tile
Click to expand...
Yes in my honest appraisal of the system you would have absolutely no hope of ever getting your panels back.

The person taking the panels could simply remove the tile and then the phone one acre away will find some mud.
 
curiouscarbon said:
Yes in my honest appraisal of the system you would have absolutely no hope of ever getting your panels back.

The person taking the panels could simply remove the tile and then the phone one acre away will find some mud.
Click to expand...
The diode case may have enough room to place hidden the tile fob... it doesn’t have to be easy to find... heck, epoxy them to a corner of the panel, and it would be unlikely any dumb criminal would know what it is...
 
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