Solar Advice (sort of off topic)
I know a lot of RV people have put together their own solar power systems so I'm looking for some advice. My driveway at home is 500 feet long and has a sharp bend in it about half way down. I can'...
Forum Discussion
DrewE wrote:
Probably easier and cheaper, if less elegant, is to run 500' of low-voltage landscape wire from your house down to your camera location. Use a 12V or so power supply at the house, and have a 5V regulator or DC-DC converter for the camera, so as to accommodate voltage/power loss in the wire. (This should be adequate for even 500 feet of 16 gauge wire with a load requiring 1A, which would have a total voltage drop of about 4V in this situation.)
A 500' roll of 16/2 landscape wire is less than $100 from Home Depot. If installed carefully in proper weather-sealed enclosures, this should operate without difficulty for a long time with basically no maintenance.
Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. I have a few hundred feet of 8-wire low voltage cable left over from my sprinkler system repair (long story). I think it's 14-gauge but it may be 16. I could probably easily bury it along the driveway, even though I'd be wasting 6 of the 8 wires.
