[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnnMFO60y8]
We saw this pretty smooth solar tracker run by an Arduino. There aren’t many details, but we can see that it works well, and is in fact, run by an Arduino. We knew if we posted this that people would be commenting that the Arduino is overkill. We agree. So this post is to ask, how would you do it? Give us links to the more efficient designs you have come up with. It doesn’t have to be a fully documented project, a schematic will do. We would probably go with something like a phototropic suspended bicore for simplicity and low power consumption.
[via littlebirceo]
The problem with solar trackers is that they add to the initial investment needed for a already expensive equipment.
This clip is worth a look (2 axis tracking for $50) charges a 12 v 8 amp-hour battery: http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/eurekafest2011:1948/videos/13435-eurekafest-2011-smithtown-high-school-west-inventeam
Worth a look: 2 axis tracking to charge a 12v, 8 amp-hr, battery for $50 – with back-facing photo-resistors to face sun in morning of next day: http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/eurekafest2011:1948/videos/13435-eurekafest-2011-smithtown-high-school-west-inventeam
I’ve searched extensively and not seen the solution I came up with anywhere else. It uses a helical slot on an outer tube and a guiding pin on an inner tube, constrained by the slot.
A motor, driven by a driver solar panel, lifts (and so twists) the main solar panel atrached to the inner tube. When the driver solar panel is shaded by the main solar panel, the motor is off and nothing happens.
When the sun moves so that light falls on the driver solar panel, it powers the motor; the inner tube lifts a little, twisting the main solar panel until the driver solar panel is shaded by it once more.
The motor only turns one way and the simple arrangement returns the inner tube at the end of day, down the helical slot back to pointing in the direction is started from.
The end result is that the main solar panel tracks the sun east to west each day. For full details see: https://niftytoolz.com/sun-tracker-prototype-another-new-motor
It relies on the battery charging circuit being able to switch on power to the driver motor at the end of day. How it does is covered in the blog post.
Put them on zepplins inflated with electrochemically derived hydrogen.
Grow an eosinophilic, photo-sensitive fungus under a thin collimating membrane between panels.
Divide the canopy into a matrix and math the half-cell potentials produced by hydrogen reducing the oxygen produced by the fungus.