Quote History Originally Posted By Undaunted:
Revisiting it tonight. The battery isn't old and has been well-maintained. We do have more traffic though. I'm letting another family use a couple stalls for kids' FFA projects. My brother and his kids access there property through mine too. I'm quietly wondering if the solar is struggling to keep up. It wouldn't be the worst problem if I can just upgrade the panel.
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Quote History Originally Posted By Undaunted:Originally Posted By haveTwo:
Checked the battery under load? I had a failing battery that was hard to diagnose since I didn't think to disconnect the solar.
Have you modified anything since the initial install?
Originally Posted By wvfarrier:
When ours malfunctions...it is almost always the battery
Revisiting it tonight. The battery isn't old and has been well-maintained. We do have more traffic though. I'm letting another family use a couple stalls for kids' FFA projects. My brother and his kids access there property through mine too. I'm quietly wondering if the solar is struggling to keep up. It wouldn't be the worst problem if I can just upgrade the panel.
How is your solar charging? Directly or through a charge controller?
I have my solar hooked up through a dedicated solar charge controller to the battery, then the battery directly wired up to the opener board, so I didn't need to get a controller that could output the current the gate needs. By the time you troubleshoot it, may just be worth replacing the solar panels. I put in a 25 watt panel (that was still bigger than what was on originally) that was all of $30. Generally only 4-6 gate cycles a day though. You can look up your general region and recommended wattage to keep up with a given number of cycles/day.
I got frustrated recently, so just did an all new battery, charge controller, and solar panel. Still not 100% on what the problem was, but it all worked afterwards.
https://ghostcontrols.com/a/blog/which-panels-will-i-need-solar-specificationsHere's the estimator from Ghost.