A small solar power system to run a LoRa water temperature sensor year round. Here’s some pretty graphs of the data:
https://www.kaedon.net/mitigomish/watertemp
This is a project that’s been running for almost 2 years now. Everything is still working with very little down time! The solar power system is way overpowered for what it’s doing, but I wanted to make sure it works through the dark winters.
The temperature sensor is at the bottom of a bucket in the ground, because the water level gets pretty low in the winter and I didn’t want the ice to destroy the temperature sensor when it drifts.
Any thoughts or suggestions for improvements are welcome!
I am not sure if that is the same; the assembly on the solar panel was larger diameter than the rest of the piping system perhaps around the size of a two-inch PVC ball valve, where the rest of system was (if I recall right) about 1-inch or maybe 1.5? But I guess there could have been a component like this inside. I am familiar with these for automotive thermostats in cooling systems, but I never pictured that they might have meant this. Otoh, why not? It would do the job and maybe work for OP’s project; especially if they are made for a range of different temperature conditions.