Anyone out there have experience running a headless always-on raspberry pi zero w?
I'm trying to set one up to do sunset time-lapses (https://lab.burn.capital/chaz/daily-sunsets) but frustratingly the pi frequently ceases to function — drops off the wifi, cronjobs don't run, etc. Every other day-ish.
I thought it might be power issues, but it's hooked up to a correctly-rated usb adapter plugged into a battery ups. I've tried a different power adapter and even a different pi.
This can't be normal... can it?
The reptile timer is even worse. It dies almost every day when plugged into it, usually halfway through a sunset. I suspect the contact brushes are causing power fluctuations as the thing physically rotates around its timer switches.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've been playing around with some new raspberry pi zero 2s and so far they seem to be a bit more stable than the original w model. I managed to capture this beaut (no clue why transcoding failed when I uploaded it to diode.zone):
https://diode.zone/w/vYWCJxVxm5tZopg9zCcEX7
Time will tell, I suppose—it crashed once, but has since stayed up a few days. I still need a better mounting method so I can keep up with the sun moving around on the horizon throughout the year. Stay tuned.
I'm ready to give up on this project, it's so frustrating that it just won't stay up.
My last idea is to get a stupid reptile timer and just cut the power to it every morning for half an hour. Feels like giving up, but at least *if* that works, I *might* end up with something to show for all my work, finally.