u/Nathar_Ghados

I picked up an old Mecer UPS recently and I’m thinking about turning it into a smart inverter/backup system using an ESP32 or ESP8266.

My idea is to add:
- battery voltage monitoring
- load/current monitoring
- temperature sensors + smart fan control
- WiFi dashboard
- low voltage cutoff protection
- maybe even solar integration later on

I come from more of a hands-on electronics background and have been getting deeper into Arduino/ESP projects recently.

Has anyone here done something similar with an older UPS? I’d love to hear ideas, warnings, recommended sensors/modules, or things you wish you did differently. Curious to see how far people have pushed projects like this.

UPS Specs:

The Mecer ME-3000-WTU is a 3000VA / 2400W true online double-conversion UPS with pure sine wave output and 0ms transfer time. It operates on a 72V battery bank made up of 6× 12V batteries (commonly 7Ah or 9Ah), supports output voltages of 220V/230V/240V with ±1% regulation, and accepts a wide input range of roughly 110V–300V AC at 40–70Hz. The unit includes USB and RS232 communication, LCD status display, SNMP/network monitoring support, IEC output sockets plus a South African plug, built-in charging at around 1–1.5A, recharge time of about 4 hours to 90%, and weighs approximately 22–29kg depending on the model version. I noticed multiple extra ports for additional fans that one can connect. There are also a few sensors connected to the heatsyncs to monitor the temp of the mosfets.

Picked up this Foxbox watch recently and wanted to hear some opinions from people who’ve owned or handled them before. How’s the build quality, durability, timekeeping, and overall value for money? Curious to hear honest experiences and thoughts today

After watching the prices go up and down and tracking it, I finally made the decision to buy while it’s low. I got this for R2440 or $146.28 USD

A while back I started developing my own weather station from scratch using Arduino as my microcontroller and then eventually switching to ESP8266. I work in the paragliding industry and I am a pilot myself. I can imagine those in this industry would understand just how important weather stations are to us, and reliable ones too. We use them everyday to look ahead of the wind direction to see what is on it’s way. We see it’s a gusty SE day so we look further up at SE weather stations to know what wind strengths to expect and how soon. If one of these stations are offline it makes it really difficult for us to make a safe call, especially commercially. This is why I intend on building for my community my own weather stations so that I can both earn a bit more income and dive deeper into my interest in electronics as well as weather forecasts and predictions.

In the pictures attached you guys will see what is my basic prototype of a weather station for at home. It currently only includes temperature and humidity sensors as I haven’t yet gotten to build additional sensors and I wouldn’t like to jump the gun if the concept won’t work.

I realized in my previous version that the radiation shield I had used was practically useless in terms of reliable readings as it traps heat and that’s a big no no. I then came up with the idea of making my own shield with parts bought from the hardware store. I decided on using 5 110mm PVC endcaps along with threaded rods, nuts and washers to create an even spacing between each layer. I went with a spacing of 20mm, but before adding the sensors I thought to halt as I’m doubting if this would work. To me I fear that rain will enter and potentially if not definitely destroy my sensors. I am trying to stay optimistic, but I am also very realistic and sometimes too cautious.

Let me know what you guys think of this DIY Radiation Shield and if and how I could improve it. Preferably not by 3D printing because otherwise that would’ve been my first option.

List of components I’m using

•Nodemcu v2 12F
•Two Led’s For Status Indication And Fault Detection
•Two DHT11 Temp & Humidity Sensors(Cheap, but only for testing purposes)
•LM2596 Buck Converter
•Cheap Solar Charge Controller
•12v 7Ah battery
•Two 9v 5w Solar Panels In Series

I’m using Blynk services to display data on my phone remotely. This is crucial as it doesn’t require me to enable port forwarding on my router which requires additional fees through my ISP subscription.

I found this rock in The Garden Route of South Africa in Wilderness. I picked it up because I thought it might be magnetic and months later forgot about it. I just rediscovered it tonight and sure as hell it is magnetic after testing it with a neodymium magnet and now I think I’ve convinced myself that it’s a meteorite,lol. It’s very hard, has a glazed finish to it, jagged here and there and yea. That’s really about it that I can describe about it.

I found this rock in The Garden Route of South Africa in Wilderness. I picked it up because I thought it might be magnetic and months later forgot about it. I just rediscovered it tonight and sure as hell it is magnetic after testing it with a neodymium magnet and now I think I’ve convinced myself that it’s a meteorite,lol. It’s very hard, has a glazed finish to it, jagged here and there and yea. That’s really about it that I can describe about it.

So I’ve had some inaccurate temperature issues with my previous idea for a radiation shield on my weather station. After looking online for hours on diy methods that aren’t made of expensive material and/or 3D printed I came up with this idea. I’ve used 5 110mm pvc endcaps with threaded rod,nuts and washers to make my own radiation shield. I’ve allowed for a spacing of 20mm between each layer for proper ventilation. Let’s hope this works and that no rain comes in! Fingers crossed.

A while back I posted about my basic weather station I’m building. Well I’ve finally put something together that not only resembles a basic weather station, but that also functions like one. Like I mentioned in my previous post - I’m a paragliding pilot and I work in the industry so we need to rely on good quality weather stations as they provide us with so much information regarding flying. This is the prototype start to creating my own good quality, reliable weather stations for my community.

As you will see in the pictures I included the things that people don’t always show. Behind every project I feel like there’s some aspect that sucks and that could’ve been better. I’m referring to my soldering works on the perfboard. This was my very second time soldering anything onto a perfboard so I think I did pretty okay considering that nothing short circuit this time. (the first time I tried this I bridged 3v3 with GND on my Nodemcu and I had to buy another one) to prevent that from happening a second time I decided to instead solder female pin headers to the perfboard, double check everything and then slot the Nodemcu onto it. This seemed to work perfectly.

Credit to Argent Data Systems. They saw my first post and reached out to me in the light of a sponsorship of a professional Weather Station Kit. Go have a look at their products on https://argentdata.com

https://argentdata.com/product/wr-01-modbus-json-csv-wind-rain-interface-set/