I am working on a couple of projects for Air Quality monitoring. In many of my networking systems, we use POE Ethernet. This avoids all issues with WiFi and AC power, as the central equipment can have redundant power as the customer requires.
I have not yet dug into the DIY system’s hardware to see what the possibilities are. I just wanted to toss out the idea!
For instances in the past where I needed POE power to a non POE device (like an access point that doesn’t have POE built in), I just use an adapter. Amazon is packed full of them. Alternatively if you wanted to build POE into your build, you need a step down converter from 48-55v to 5v. The adapters are so cheap that between the cost of parts and the cost of time to build it, you’d come out ahead buying the adapter.
Edit: The board you need for wired ethernet is: WT32-ETH01, but it won’t fit in the AirGradient case.
This is interesting! Why do you think it won’t fit the case? because it’s too big or because of pinouts?
Also, that board doesn’t look like it’s dealing with PoE, do you think there’s a way to work around that?
It looks like this board might do both ethernet and PoE, and should work with Arduino boards like the Airgradient:
That provides 1.5A, not sure that’s enough for the AirGradient, what’s the input power for the DIY kit? The AirGradient ONE spec talks about 2A at 5V, so maybe that’s not enough.
[Continued because Discourse doesn’t want me to post multiple links at once.]
Also, not sure it would fit better of course… The olimex is unclear about dimensions. Main page says 80 x 28 but the user manual says 98 x 28mm.
In the raspi world, there’s a bunch of options as well, for example Adafruit stocks this (56.4mm x 20.3mm x 13.2mm):
Also provides only 1.5A though.
This one is the “insulated” version that’s supposed to be larger, but looking at the specs it’s actually smaller, or at least differently shaped (56 x 14.3 x 16mm):
Their specification pins it at 2A over 5V, but the adafruit site mentions 1.8A so I’m not sure what’s up there.
Finally sparkfun has this board: (look on sparkfun dot com for product 18709 since I cannot link to it).
That also does the 1.8A nominal dance, so also unclear if has enough power. Dimensions of the main component seem to be 14x13.39x21.19mm according to the specification so maybe that’s the chip that would be needed to rewire a kit properly.
Anyways, that’s what I found in my search. I’m far from an electronics person that could pull this off right now, but maybe soon I’ll look into how this could be bolted on instead of relying on wall warts…