Can anyone recommend an outdoor enclosure that I can find in Australia?
I got one I thought would work from Jaycar but it doesn’t quite fit. (Would if the CT claps had 90° connectors). Not sure if they have anything larger.
Would also be good to have some extra space in case I decide to replace with a larger or multiple units in the future.
Can these things run in a IPxx rated enclosure? Wondering about heat in summer.
Alternatively is it possible to swap the RSP8266 module with one that has an external antenna. Sparkie is happy to install it in the main box and there is plenty of room, but I get zero Wifi with this little chip through the metal box. That would avoid all the external cable routing too.
(Guy who installed the smartmeter just drilled a hole and poked through an antenna for the Telstra LTE)
Thanks! That one looks really good. I think searching for ‘Electrical Junction Box’ gives a few choices. A picture of yours would be awesome if you get the time. Interested in how you did the conduit too. Any overheating or Wifi issues? Assume it’s on the outside of the house?
I haven’t tried it for my IotaWatt but I use simple cheap containers from Coles for my temperature monitoring. They seem to be pretty UV resistant, are transparent so you can see the status LED and easy to get into. The IotaWatt doesn’t use much power so heat isn’t a big issue unless you are mounting in full sun. They drill easily so sticking a gland on the side for conduit is simple.
I went down to my local TLE and got one of their IP rated electrical boxes - it is mounted on the side of my meter box (under cover) and out of direct sunlight - i have the power supply and reference cable come in through a small hole i drilled in the bottom and then a 2nd larger hole for all the CTs to come in.
Initially i was worried about heat and mounted a 2nd ESP8266 (Lolin NodeMCU board) in there with a DS18B20 temp sensor - temperature never seemed to move much day to day (obviously seasonally it did) so i ended up taking it out