Accessing the solar website:

The idea of permacomputing has been developing for many years with contributors from many places and origins. Many artists, designers, cultural workers, critical makers, engineers, and developers are to be thanked. Some of the primary sources that motivated this project for Wilderland are:

• The solar powered website for the lowtechmagazine
• Solar Protocol
• The community of contributors to the LIMITS conferences
• compost.party

While this project aims to be a website that has very low ecological impact as possible, a number of compromises and caveats have arisen, these need to be acknowledged, and hope to be addressed in the future:

• Making, publishing and hosting two websites is a serious issue. The original intention was to have multiple, isolated, digital information stations installed in the Nephin Park. These were intended to be solar-powered, and would broadcast a local wifi for hikers and park visitors to gain access to Wilderland and Park information. The reality of the very remote installations, selection of locations, and probable need for manual (in person) updates forced a rethink, that concluded with this solar installation in the Ballycroy Visitors Centre. Any installations or deployments to date are meant to be easily taken down, and are made up of mostly repurposed equipment.

• In the spirit of Permacomputing, the electrical equipment needed for the solar-server installation is mostly made up of second-hand equiment.

• The panels themselves are having their second life after being on somebody’s shed. This prior installation also generously provided wiring, fuses, MC4 connectors, and an assortment of electrical connectors and crimps.
• The 12V 22AH battery was donated by a golfer who used it in a caddy. The exact health of this battery is to be determined, but even in poor health, suits this installation well.
• The charge controller was purchased on eBay and seems to have had a previous life on a boat in Italy. The selection of this Victron Unit was for the built-in logging tools that this brand offers. It was very useful to have direct data logging while testing the installation, and being able to get an idea of the battery health.
• A new, weather proof electrical box was purchased to house the equipment, as this installation has been made in an education ‘hut’ that is used by Ballycroy Visitors Center staff and many visiting school groups. Protecting the visitors and the equipment became vital, hence the purchase of an appropriately sized electical box.
• The solar-panel mounting hardware proved to be challenging, as the Atlantic facing weather in Co. Mayo, and the exposure of the Visitor Center Education Hut meant that a DIY wooden frame would not have sufficed. Professional solar panel installation services provided advice, but were not paculiarly interested in this quite small installation. The Education Hut and the roof of the building itself are lightweight. The roof was never intended to bear any significant weight, and therefore a ballast mounting system was not possible. Instead, in collaboration with key National Parks and Wildlife Services General Operatives, the current combination of V-Rails and wooden braces was made. The installation is certainly not the most visually pleasing, but does embrace the modularity, and has survived multiple storms.
• The ‘server’ itself, is a Samsung A40 android device, that was kindly donated by a family member. The device became too slow for the initial user, and was replaced. This smartphone replaces a previous attempt with a Postmarket OS device (also a recycled Samsung device), which itself replaced a RaspberryPi SBC device.

• Another major issue is that the remote server is currently working on cellular connection. 3g, 4g and 5g cellular networks each incrementally require significantly more electrical power than wired network equivalents. It was a stroke of coincidental luck that Ballycroy Visitors Centre has a cellular mast nearby. It would have been preferred to make a connection via the Visitors Centre, but over recent months, Storm Éowyn in January 2025, has had continued impact on Co. Mayo’s internet connections. This cellular connection for the remote server is a convenience compromise. In the device is an IOT style (Data only) sim card.

Both the websites are built using the static site generator eleventy. The ‘markdown’ text and content sources are shared and a diverging set of templates are used to build two sites. The versioning system used, is a self-hosted instance of Gitlab, and a Continuous Integration pipeline is in place to build the two sites artefacts periodically. Each server instance then downloads the specific zipped artefacts and expands them in place to serve an up to date version of the site. Content management is achieved via StaticCMS (now DecapCMS) which provides content focused UI on the Git versioning system. It also provides a media management interface for image upload. This facilitates content authoring, while saving updates as commits. This stack can be seen at https://git.materialsmatter.ie/colm/wilderland.ie/