DIY Solar-Powered Orange Pi Cat.1 IoT System

If you're interested in Orange Pi and solar power, this article is worth a read.

To deploy an Orange Pi with Cat.1 connectivity in a vehicle, you can power it using a solar panel, a 12V 7Ah gel battery, and a solar charge controller. For the board setup, consider using an Orange Pi Zero combined with a GM190 Cat.1 module and a DHT11 sensor, running the Armbian operating system.

Upon startup, the Cat.1 module is activated and a data connection is established using AT commands (controlled via Python and shell scripts). Make sure you're using the correct mode—if the Linux mode doesn't work as documented, try using the Windows mode instead. Once the connection is live, you can start the NPS (reverse proxy) service to connect to your server, enabling remote access.

To conserve battery life, you can lock the CPU frequency at 480MHz and enable power-saving mode. The entire setup should draw less than 1A of current. If you find that a 30W solar panel isn't sufficient, you can later add a voltage monitoring function for the battery.

Note that this is still a work in progress. The data collection code isn't covered in detail here—you'll need to develop that part yourself.

If you run into issues getting the DHT11 sensor to work under Linux, an alternative approach is to collect data locally using Python, upload it to your server, and then access it from a mobile device.

Done.