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video Solar tracker using an old hard drive
An idea I tried out for a solar tracker. There's two solar panels wired so that they oppose each other, these panels are connected to the read head of the hard drive. There's a neodymium magnet on the end of the read head which trips the one of two reed switches depending on which way the read head moved. The reed switches activate the motor till it points at the sun.
Excellent! Thank you.
Hope you will apply your talents to helping us develop an easy "everyman's" heliostat, which keeps the sun's reflection from a mirror on a single point throughout the day for use in water heating, space lighting and heating through a window, etc.
The best I have seen so far is by a Canadian fellow (gpm4985 on youtube) but it uses an arduino microprocessor (he has graciously posted his open source program for it on his website at cerebralmeltdown.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtyKXREPDEA (his heliostat in operation)
See this page on my website:
http://www.redrok.com/heliolighting.htm
This describes a heliostat mount I call a "Receiver Axis" mount.
It doesn't need a micro to do calculation. Just a simple dual axis
direct tracker.
Duane
Tan sencillo como el "padre nuestro" y tan efectivo como el "tridente"...
Muchas gracias por compartirlo.
your concept seemingly is very simple. i will be grateful if you detail on it. need it for my solar power plant project.
regards :-)
BTW, give the address of your site too. will check it out :-)
If you decide to do this, try your best to preserve the original ribbon cable, it's much better than adding your own cables!
I've just noticed that I forgot something on my page, there's a tiny steel "thing" that it's attracted to the magnets so that the read head always returns to one place, you need to remove this.
- Does it work "for real", tracking the brightest part of the sky during the day?
- Why the devil have you not posted a full Instructable for this??
(Oh, and did you know that you have taken what, as far as a I know, is a wholly original tack on the concept of a headbot?)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfdjk0zee7U
The tracker in the sun