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DIY Analog Solar Tracker WIP (please excuse the mess!) 8
DIY Analog Solar Tracker WIP (please excuse the mess!)
DIY Analog Solar Tracker WIP (please excuse the mess!) from electronics
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Just a simple analog solar tracker that uses 4 LDRs to detect the direction of the brightest light source. The LDRs create a varying analog voltage that gets compared to a sawtooth ramp waveform to create the PWM signals that go to the servos to adjust their angular position, directing the servo (and the LDRs which are taped to the servo’s arm) towards the light source.
I use discrete transistors to make the sawtooth signal and an NTE943M for the comparator IC, and a *hell* of a lot of smoothing capacitors to reduce the jerkiness of the servos at the expense of turning speed.
Eventually I’m going to add a second access and a fairly large solar cell to see if it will actually end up increasing the power output more than it costs to actually run the servos! I might modify it more to only operate maybe every 5 minutes with a 5% duty cycle (or less) to limit the wasted power of constantly tracking the sun
At first I thought you used a micro controller so wasn’t that impressed but when I realised you made it analogue 😳
Wow
That’s good. I’m developing one for myself right now but I’m just using some 741 to drive the motor.
Damn, was about to mention how it looks like it could use some sleep timers to save power, but that ain’t got no controller in it. o_o
I had read many many years ago that some NASA engineer made something like this (it was a motorized solar panel that follows the sun) by placing small solar panels behind a large solar panel. They were placed so that as the sun moved across the face of the large solar panel and shined on a panel behind it, the now enlightened panel would power a small motor causing the whole contraption to move until the small panel was again in the shade behind the larger one. I think about it from time to time, thank you for reminding me.
That’s a tidy bench if I ever saw one, especially when doing analog beadboard work lmao.
Don’t be ashamed of the mess! If you have a mess it means you are working!
Cool! With a little work you could make a heat seeking missile.