CraftStrom

Solar for anyone, anywhere 🌤 – grid-tied and off-grid

1 follower

Solar for anyone, anywhere 🌤 – grid-tied and off-grid

1 follower

CraftStrom is a plug & play solar ☀️ panel and battery 🔋 system that can be used at home 🏡 or on the go 🚐. It’s especially suitable if you live in an apartment – you can hook up your solar panel on your balcony or window.

Launch tags:Home•Batteries•Crowdfunding

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Trying to figure this out. Can one use the system year-round for vanlife? Stored inside while traveling and put out during stops? If so, would one have to install conventional 120 volt outlets and AC wiring rather than DC? Could one still add an inverter to the system to power DC devices? Would charging 2 1/2 hrs per day in winter (4 in summer) generate & store enough power to run a .85ah/h fridge and lights overnight? Does the App run on Android or Mac?

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5yr ago

CraftStrom

Maker

@alan_michaels Hi Alan, Sure you can use it in a van! The battery has DC outlets (2xUSB A and 1xUSB C) and a 500W AC inverter so you can run it all from it directly. 2.5 hours will probably not charge it full in winter, but it should be enough to trickle charge. .85Amps isn’t much. Are you referring to an AC fridge? The battery will run a 150Watt AC fridge for 2 days almost, since the compressor will only run shortly for the cooling cycle. We use SunPower cells, which are very efficient. You will get some production even in heavy overcast, but not much.

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5yr ago

CraftStrom

Maker

@alan_michaels oh and I see we haven't answered this – the app runs both on iOS and Android. It's already live in the AppStore and on Google Play. We don't have a desktop app yet.

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5yr ago

CraftStrom

Maker

Hey, I'm also a part of the team – I worked on the CraftStrom mobile app. All the hobbyists and developers here might be interested to know that we're developing CraftStrom to be an open platform – it will be possible to extend it and integrate it with other home automation projects. The data that you collect from your solar power generation and battery charge / discharge patterns in your CraftStrom account will be accessible to you through a HTTP REST API. This will allow you to download it and use it for other purposes and extend it in your DIY projects. We love open source! We use it in our work and we plan to open source a few of CraftStrom's key components as well to allow the community to build an ecosystem around our products and make them interoperable with other home automation devices. Any ideas already for what you'd like to connect to your home solar panel and battery and how? 🤓

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5yr ago

CraftStrom

Maker

Hey product hunters! 👋 Here is a longer video explaining CraftStrom more from a business side –

I am very excited to find our company here. It's been a loooong 4 years since I started working on this idea. It all started with my first off-grid portable solar power plant that I built for Burning Man. Things escalated kind of quickly from there....thanks to an incredible team! When we founded CraftStrom 4 years ago we had a vision to provide solar+battery systems that you can install yourself using only standard power outlets. Today is a big day for us as we’re launching our Kickstarter campaign and introducing our product for the first time to the broader public. We can’t wait to see if people will join our journey… It took a lot of tears, sweat, long nights, semi-manual projects and blue-sky R&D to get to this point. Developing hardware products is hard, but rewarding once you see your product in use. Our solar panel is already certified for use in the US and will be certified for Europe now. We still need to certify the battery as we prepare for production. We’re working on getting all certifications for the US and Europe! And this is just the start for us! Our ecosystem already includes a machine learning algorithm that takes weather and geo data to anticipate your power production for better battery control. In the future we plan to add many more integrations with external services (power contract integration, location services) and better integrate our battery management AI with other smart home devices. We’re already developing a smart amp-meter that plugs into your circuit board and monitors the whole household’s power consumption so that we can better adapt to individual usage patterns. We’re super excited for future possibilities once our solution takes on! You can read a bit more about how we’ve been covered in the press here – https://www.parlayme.com/post/cr... or https://bit.ly/2LCyiLa Feel free to ask the CraftStrom team and me anything you want to know about our product!

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5yr ago

For me, this is a fantastic option. Solar power plants can serve as the primary source of energy or as a backup in the event that the main grid fails. When there is no central power grid nearby, as I do, a stand-alone solar power station will be essential as the primary source of electricity, therefore I purchased a large panel https://www.dragonsbreathsolar.c.... A solar power station will provide an alternative to generators if the major power sources are temporarily shut down. When the electricity goes out at the cottage, you can safely use the energy from the sun's rays to carry out emergency repairs.

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4yr ago

Hey product hunters! 👋 Here is a longer video explaining CraftStrom more from a business side –