samnied/solar-tracker

Solar-Tracker

About The Project

The SolarTracker was designed for the Smartfeld Photonics Workshops. Check out Smartfeld for detailed information about the workshops.

Getting Started

The SolarTracker can be operated in three different modes

manual

Use the onboard rotary encoder to control the Pan and Tilt angle of the SolarTracker. The current angle aswell as the voltages from the LDR-sensors and the solar cell are displayed on the 2.4 inch TFT-display.

automatic

In automatic mode the SolarTracker will automaticly track and follow the brightest spot.

remote

In remote mode one can control the SolarTracker over I2C to modify the servos and read the sensor values. Take a look at BBC Micro:bit to operate the SolarTracker in remote mode with the BBC Micro:Bit.

Technical Details

• The SolarTracker consists of an ESP32 microcontroller using LVGL as graphics library
• The PCBs are manufacutred by JLCPCB
• All the wooden parts are made of laser cutted 3mm MDF
• The SolarTracker supports OTA(over the air updates), however it is still in experimental state at the moment
• The code running on the ESP32 is closed source, this may change in the future

BBC Micro:bit

To control the SolarTracker with BBC Micro:bit inlcude the SolarTracker-Library as makecode extension.