RAK Wireless Unify Enclosure IP65 Solar Panel + integrated 915 MHz & bluetooth antenna 910397

Solar panel update from my previous review:

To understand the solution, I need to present the problem: The solar panel is in a location with moderate sun but not direct sun. The 3AH battery also purchase from rokland would last about 1 month with assistants from solar but would have to be recharged at some point. I even purchase an additional solar panel SKU 920399 and soldered it in parallel with the existing one which added about a half month but wasn't satisfactory as this unit is on top of a 32 foot mast. It has become a pain in a certain body part to have to take down and disassemble to recharge the battery and reassemble and raise the mast again.

A side note: My POWER CONFIG settings are set to the following prior to the solution and alone were not enough to resolve the issue; Shutdown on battery delay 0, ADC multiplier override ratio 1.73, wait for bluetooth 60, Super deep sleep 1800, light sleep 900, max wake time 30, battery ina_2xx i2c address 0.

The Possible Solution: When the battery got down to 14%, I went to the LORA settings on the radio and disabled the TX which prevented the radio from transmitting. This allowed the battery to charge to about 35% within a few days. At this point I enabled the TX again and made some other changes in the radio settings. In DEVICE I changed the role from CLIENT to CLIENT_HIDDEN which limits the rebroadcasting of messages to current channels configured in the node. I also changed Nodeinfo broadcast interval from default to 7200 seconds. I made the POSITION interval much higher as this node is stationary. The TELEMETRY intervals I set to 1800 each because I have the temperature sensor. All these settings are related to transmission.

About 3 days after making these changes, the battery charged to 39%. This is still with the additional solar panel but this should certainly help even with the single panel included in this case. It took me 4 months to find this solution so hopefully it helps someone who already has this case or someone who plans on purchasing one. I left the review at 4 star because of the undersized solar panel and lack of access to USB port. Otherwise the build quality surpassed my expectations.

Quality of enclosure itself is great! PCB with antennas, rubber gasket and mountable with optional brackets. Don't expect much from the built in solar panel. May extend the battery life at best but will not recharge. Will eventually need to be disassembled and recharged even with radio configured with low power settings enabled. With lack of adequate solar charging, enclosure needs a removable waterproof plug access to the USB charging port. In all fairness, I don't have a location where the solar panel gets unobstructed sun from dawn to dusk but does get a decent amount of direct sun from late morning to late afternoon.

Box is small and tight. The mounting board with the integrated antenna seems to work really nice.

The solar panel is useless and complete garbage.
Panel has to be pointed directly at full sun before the red charging led turns on and even then It doesnt charge the battery.

Would like to love this case. It’s small, water tight, and has solar. So, it should be good for a remote station, right? In my limited testing, however, the battery that fits the case (for the Meshtastic Rak board) has low capacity. And, the solar panel doesn’t provide enough juice to keep the battery topped up, or the board working. So, I would not call it set-and-forget. Worse yet, when the sun comes back, and charges (?) the battery, the WisBlock does not come back on- you have to unscrew the cover, and reset the WisBlock manually. If you also have to charge the battery via USB, you have to unscrew the mounting (carrier) board, because the Wisblock USB port is too close to the case to plug in. The screws for the carrier board that came with my units are magnetic, but the screws that close the case are not- and the screw is far enough down a hole that is both deep and wide enough for the screws to not settle into the nuts. That makes closing the case back up more difficult than it should be. Tested with three cases and boards, and assembly/disassembly is not my idea of fun.
Would suggest a hinged case design, and a tool-free carrier board removal. And, of course, a more capable solar panel to keep the unit powered.
The build quality of the case is good. Again, wish I could love it.

I was pleased that there was just enough room to fit a cable gland on the box. It took some filing, but it worked.