My friend Aidan who many of you will know through this blog, has just put an entry into Hackaday about his self-powered, auto aligning solar tracker. He is building a house in Aragon in Spain with no electricity but he’s compensating for that with lots of solar power – which in turn needs a tracking system. In true DIY fashion, Aidan is developing that himself.
If you’d like to know more, here’s the Hackaday link.
Hi Aiden
I am interested in the ESP GO boards with the built-in power supply. Have the Gerbers for these boards ever been up loaded and if so where can I find them.
Thanks
Clifv
Hi Aiden,
Boards ordered and on the way, so far pleased with JLCPBC.
Would it be possible to share the schematic and board files for the 3 PCBs. This makes populating the boards a little easier?
Thanks
Nick
Aidan, of course you don’t need this, but maybe others yes, and you can tell us if it’s valid or not… i just received this by email, if anybody is interested in PCB design 🙂
https://resources.ema-eda.com/pcb-design-content-central/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-pcb-design
I’m sure that could be useful. I think that I’ve already made evry mistake going in the PCB design world though!
there’s no learning without mistakes 🙂
BTW, the correct pcb files are in PCB REF-SOLAR TRACKER 2.3.zip
Thanks Aiden
Hi Aiden,
Thanks for posting this. When I order the boards which .zip do I need to upload to jlcpcb, is it the :
PIP 4048
8 channel solar current monitor
and
PCB REF-Lion Backup.
Thanks
Nick
Excellent write up of what you are hoping to achieve but it would probably cheaper and easier to add a couple of extra solar panels to get the same total output that the tracker will provide.
Well, I’ll let you know as I get a number of units built. My iniital trials are pointing to about a doubling in available power if you have about 150 degrees of horizontal adjustment.
You could, of course, only hook up the elevation adjustment part and mechanically that’s a lot easier and you will get some advantage, but nowhere near as much as a full solar tracker.
As solar panels become much cheaper, so long as you have sufficient space, as you say, it may just eventually be cheaper to angle some panels towards the morning sun, some towards the midday and some towards the afternoon sun positions!
great work 🙂