Developing a photovoltaic solar tracker controller with a MKR Zero
Arduino Team — August 7th, 2019
While energy consumption is an important concern in our modern world, you might have noticed that energy in the form of light shines down on us every day from the sun. Solar panels can be utilized to harvest this and turn it into useful electricity, and if your panels can track the sun throughout the day, you can see an efficiency bump of 15-40%.
In order to experiment with this concept, Frank Migge has, after several iterations, come up with a beautiful display called the “SunTracker2 Revision 2.”
The device uses stored sun data fed to an Arduino MKR Zero via its SD card reader, and controls 32 LEDs that show the sun’s position, sunset/sunrise, and magnetic north. Automatic alignment is handled by an onboard magnetometer, and a stepper is even implemented to simulate future panel movement.
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