☀️ Solar Tiny Sound 🔊 first test run at Carrier Park, Asheville, NC.
Introducing Solar Tiny Sound
It is super exciting to announce that we have performed the first test of our new mobile solar powered PA system. As you see in the pics below, we paired a Pioneer DDJ-SR controller and Dell Inspiron laptop and Serato DJ Pro with a Renogy Phoenix solar generator and a Mackie Freeplay personal PA Bluetooth speaker.
Yesterday, we took the set up for a spin, pun fully intended, LOL. The weather report showed a good chance of rain. The rain held out until today. Carrier Park, in Asheville, NC, has a large covered pavilion so rain wouldn't be an issue, and a cloudy day is the perfect condition under which to make the solar generator show and prove. Made sure all batteries we're at 100% in the laptop, the speakers and the generator and left the extra panels and ac charging cable at home deliberately.
We packed up the gear, got in the minivan we just purchased and met up with the other members of #HipHopisDead to practice for our upcoming show in NYC.
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We got to the park well before the drummers; as usual, I set up the DJ gear and got to mixing.
At first, the Mackie Freeplay and the Rockville ROCKBOX we're using as a DJ monitor ran on their own battery power at a fairly loud volume. I wanted to see how long it would take before I could detect a drop in the quality of the audio at a high volume. I'd estimate about two hours.
Once I realized the speakers, and my ears, were struggling a bit, I plugged them into the generator along with the laptop. The Phoenix was down to about 74% by then. After rocking for about another 40 minutes, for some reason, the laptop would not charge. It has a new charger which, upon inspection, turns out to have a small nick in the plastic as if it was dropped. I thought it might have an intermittent short, so everyone packed up and called it a day.
After using the Phoenix for a couple of hours, I wanted to see if it would charge with cloud cover.
Whadda ya know!?! It charged a little.
Today, I'm doing some trouble shooting. I want to be sure weather or not the laptop charger needs replacing or if there is some other issue. As of now, I have the laptop fully charged and plugged into the phoenix, also fully charged. I've got the controller turned on via bus power from the laptop as well as my external one gigabyte hard drive. After a couple of hours, the Phoenix is down to 59% at the time of this writing. The laptop remains fully charged.
Once the Phoenix battery dies, I will recharge it fully. There is rain in the forecast for 2 days so I won't get to see how it does with full sunlight until then. Fortunately, the Phoenix can be plugged into a wall socket.
I do not want to speculate what the problem might have been or if it will continue to be present until after these tests, although I believe now it may have been the few raindrops which fell on the controller's touch sensitive jog wheels causing it to bug out.
Tomorrow...
I'll post again once I've come to some conclusion.
🙏 
✊.
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This is so freakin dope!! Solar powered sound system respect on sharing the experience! Kudos
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sick!
Are you using a DC to DC charger for the laptop @movement19?
AC
@movement19 a DC to DC travel charger would be much more efficient for charging the laptop. I like the experiment.
if the generator is ac and the laptop is ac why would i use any convertors?
@movement19 The laptop itself is a DC device and it's battery is DC. The solar panels themselves are DC devices. The Li-ion battery pack inside the 'solar generator' is a 14.8 Volt DC 16AH battery that powers the inverter to make AC. Even pure sine wave inverters like that one are not as efficient as if you just went DC from the battery pack from the solar generator's 12 Volt utility port which is also called the cigarrete port or 'DC Out' in the image I have included. Making AC power to power a DC device (the laptop in this case) when you already have DC power available is inefficient and an unecessary step and wastes your battery pack's stored power and/or the power you are generating to charge the battery pack with the solar panel.