Powering Blue Board

[lostinignorance]

I am looking for ideas on the feasibility of possibly of powering the system blue.

POE powered:
Use a POE to USB adapter (Something like PoE Splitter with MicroUSB Plug)

Solar with super caps
Use more super caps, but concept is there (Something like 5v Solar Power Supply)

Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug?

[cutty]

I am looking for ideas on the feasibility of possibly of powering the system blue.

POE powered:
Use a POE to USB adapter (Something like PoE Splitter with MicroUSB Plug)

Solar with super caps
Use more super caps, but concept is there (Something like 5v Solar Power Supply)

Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug?

Power it as it is designed to be powered:  a good quality USB 5V supply.  Don't waste your time trying to innovate with power supplies unless there is some extreme reason to do so. You're working in the 'noise' band trying to select some specific noises. Don't add opportunities for more noise... especially when installing and optimizing, and learning what you've joined.
Folks have done both... success varies per individual, location, need, etc.
Solar Supplies are notorious for noise. The controller needs to be where you can access it so why POE?  Poor, noisy power supplies and many so called 'chargers' are a big percentage of 'issues' with systems.  If the currently installed jack has power to the controller 5V line, you can POE, but why????  You sure don't want a glitch sending 48V hard and heavy spike into the controller! Do NOT underestimate the importance of the designed power supply, but you really don't need to 'overkill' either.

[hazelnut]

Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug?

The most important thing is to use a good-quality 5V linear power supply, not a typical switchmode power supply that'll inject all sorts of noise into the system.  You can find these sold to audio enthusiasts who want to run USB-powered computer gear off low-noise power.  if you avoid the crystals and magic green pens and monster oxygen-free antimatter heatsinks and other stuff you can find a fairly decent non-switchmode USB power supply there.

[allsorts]

Whilst I agree that decent linear PSU is the way to go to squeeze every last bit of signal out of the noise PoE can be tamed and be very useful if the controler is not within a few feet of mains power, say out in a barn. Sending 0.5 A at 5 V for any distance needs fairly hefty cable to avoid an unacceptable voltage drop.

Switchedmode PSU's do tend to be very noisy but they aren't all created equal. Go trough all those you have and you might find a quiet one. On PoE check out this thread: Blitzortung.org Forum › Public Forums › Hardware, Software, Lightning Physics > PoE recommendations for System Blue (Sep/Oct 2016). That setup has been powering my controller 24/7 for the last seven years with no issues. The mentioned TL-POE10R PoE splitter is still available, at least in the UK, for around GBP 10.00.

The risk of damage to the controler from having 48 V shoved where it shouldn't be is minimal. A proper PoE IEEE 802.3af power source won't provided the full 48 V until it thinks it is connected to a valid powered device. Once up it checks that too much power isn't being drawn and disconnects if there is. Passive PoE, however, is risky, see the mentioned thread above. The biggest risk with the TL-POE10R is the little switch that selects the output voltage to 12, 9 or 5 V being "accidentally" set incorrectly.

[hazelnut]

Another thing you can do if you really need to power the Blue from a switchmode PSU is to put a DC filter between it and the Blue.  There are two main variants of this on Aliexpress that everyone copies, I ordered both (they're only a few dollars) at the start of the year but the second variant is lost in Sunyou's postage system so I can't provide performance measurements for it yet.

[Alex123]

I am looking for ideas on the feasibility of possibly of powering the system blue.

POE powered:
Use a POE to USB adapter (Something like PoE Splitter with MicroUSB Plug)

Solar with super caps
Use more super caps, but concept is there (Something like 5v Solar Power Supply)

Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug

I use simple linear power suplly. Ordered here: https://famaga.com/catalog.

[allsorts]

I am looking for ideas on the feasibility of possibly of powering the system blue.

POE powered:
Use a POE to USB adapter (Something like PoE Splitter with MicroUSB Plug)

Solar with super caps
Use more super caps, but concept is there (Something like 5v Solar Power Supply)

Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug

I use simple linear power suplly. Ordered here: https://famaga.com/catalog.

Just get a *long* list of brand names, no particular product...

Anyway the mention of super caps and solar caught my eye, especially after a quick look on eBay found 2.7 V 500 F jobies for less than GBP10.00 each. But unless I've got the maths seriosly wrong, a couple of series super caps of that sort of rating will struggle to power a Blue for an hour and would need a boost DC-DC convertor to manage that.

Ecap = (C * V^2)/2 = (500 * 5.4^2)/2 = 7290 J = 2 Whr.
A blue draws about 350 mA @ 5 V = 1.75 W

Have a got something wrong?

--
Cheers
Dave.

[allsorts]

I am looking for ideas on the feasibility of possibly of powering the system blue.
POE powered:
Use a POE to USB adapter (Something like PoE Splitter with MicroUSB Plug)
Solar with super caps
Use more super caps, but concept is there (Something like 5v Solar Power Supply)
Can anyone lend some incite into how they have been powering their devices outside of the basic USB plug?

Power it as it is designed to be powered:  a good quality USB 5V supply.  Don't waste your time trying to innovate with power supplies unless there is some extreme reason to do so. You're working in the 'noise' band trying to select some specific noises. Don't add opportunities for more noise... especially when installing and optimizing, and learning what you've joined.
Folks have done both... success varies per individual, location, need, etc.
Solar Supplies are notorious for noise. The controller needs to be where you can access it so why POE?  Poor, noisy power supplies and many so called 'chargers' are a big percentage of 'issues' with systems.  If the currently installed jack has power to the controller 5V line, you can POE, but why????  You sure don't want a glitch sending 48V hard and heavy spike into the controller! Do NOT underestimate the importance of the designed power supply, but you really don't need to 'overkill' either.

Yes, you are absolutely right. Please use the recommended power supply to stabilize and avoid unnecessary complications. Power quality is important, especially in noise-sensitive applications.

Why do you need access to the controller?  The last time I visited mine was to try and upgrade the GPS modules firmware due to the date problem. Before that I hadn't visited it for years.

Why use PoE? 'Cause it's only one (low voltage) cable. No mains power available. No need for a mains USB PSU/Charger that are slightly prone to going BANG! Noise, well unless you manage to find a USB PSU or a PoE adapator(*) that is quiet that'll always be a problem. A low pass filter in the supply wires works wonders. You can remotely do a power down reboot by either unplugging the ethernet cable from the PoE source or using the PoE sources web interface to toggle the PoE on the relevant port.

(*) PoE adapters are just SMPU'S that happen to take 48 V DC instead of mains. Everything else is the same, few 10's of kHz of drive frequency to a chopper FET feeding the primary of a small transformer, bridge rectifier and smoothing on the secodary side. Note that transformer it would be virtually impossible for the 48 V to end up on the output due to the isolation it provides. Not to mention the 48 V isnt there until the source has verfied the destination would like to have PoE.