Solar Tracker
Solar Tracker and Logger
2021
This project was aimed at experimenting with solar energy solutions to charge my small devices. It was also aimed at improving my previous solar circuits, as I had this solar panel for a while at this time and I wanted to do something significant with it.
This ended up turning into a motorized solar panel that tracked the sun and logged what values I was getting. I wanted to mock commercial and industrial solar trackers, which had interactive graphs and such. I made my app with Blynk, which allowed me to connect to the NodeMCU which was the microcontroller on this project. I considered using a Raspberry Pi rather than an IoT device, but that seemed far too overkill. The Blynk app ended up working well, allowing me to track the voltage the panel was producing over a given time period, as well as allowed me to monitor the on-board accelerometer which measured the tilt and direction of the panel.
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I ended up using 4 photoresistors in order to track where the sun was at any given time. I built a cross out of flat wood, which gave me 4 quadrants to attach each of the photoresistors to. This allowed me to separate them and tell which direction the sun was the strongest. If the sun was stronger to the right of the panel for example, the panel might rotate right 90 degrees then tilt to get it facing exactly where the photo resistor was facing. I apologize for the short demonstration video, I did not have many videos or testing it. Hope it still demonstrates how it works!
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The rest of this project was essentially just additional wiring to power the MCU, and wiring in the relay and batteries. I used a pack of CR18650's for batteries, and a relay to turn the motors on. The MCU would only start logging and controlling the panel movement when the panel could power it directly, that way it wasn't waiting energy at night or when there was insufficient sunlight.
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