World's simplest sun tracker.

this is the world's simplest solar tracker it'll always try and point directly towards the sun it could do this without the need of any computer chips computer programs programming the only condition is that it needs to be in direct sunlight it could do this with just three components the solar panels the base and an electric motor but how does it work and how is it so simple we start with two solar panels and the real magic is how we wire these two solar panels to this electric motor we'll attach two black wires to the negative side of the motor and two red or orange wires to the positive side of the motor and now we'll solder on some wires to the solar panels we'll use black for negative and the warm colors for positive the base is simple there are two parts a stationary part and a part that moves the part that moves holds the electric motor and the two solar panels the stationary part is where the motor shaft is inserted into [Music] now let's get back into the magic of the wiring when you attach a solar panel to a dc motor the dc motor will spin in a certain direction but if we flip the wires the dc motor will spin in an opposite direction here you can see the motor changing direction when the wires are flipped now this is where it becomes really cool instead of using one solar panel and switching the wires we could actually use two solar panels wired in reverse so when this solar panel is in the sun it rotates this direction and when the other solar panel is in the sun it rotates the other direction if both solar panels are in the sun there's no motion because the voltage is cancelled out here's my first attempt at trying out the world's simplest solar tracker you can see it's oscillating way too much it's almost working it's kind of pointing towards the sun i'll fix this issue of the oscillation but it does provide a good example for how it works if we pause here you can see the sun is only hitting this solar panel this will cause it to want to spin in this direction when it's facing this way the sun is only hitting this solar panel causing it to want to rotate the other direction at first i thought it was oscillating because the angle between the two solar panels was too much so i tried to reduce the angle [Music] i made a special piece that allows me to change the angle of the solar panels as you can see it still oscillates and i found out that it's not the angle between the solar panels is actually the speed of the motor that matters the motor is too fast so it's overshooting the neutral point this was a fairly easy fix all i had to do was find a 10 rpm dc motor by using a slower motor the contraption doesn't overshoot the neutral point where both solar panels are facing the sun and now you can see the world's simplest solar tracker working perfectly there are some engineering solutions that are just so simple that it's really just amazing this works independent of location on the earth there's no internet needed no programming no software no control board nothing just an electric motor and some solar panels here's a time lapse of it working throughout the day you can see how it's not rotating perfectly smooth and this is because the dc motor requires a minimum voltage to rotate basically one solar panel has to overpower the other solar panel just enough to get the dc motor to spin i hope you enjoyed this video and i hope you learned that sometimes the best engineering solutions are the simplest thanks for watching and happy printing if you liked this video check out some of the other videos that i've made if you want to make this project yourself you can find the stl files on my website for free and if you want to support 3d printer academy so i can make more videos just like this then click the join button below once again thanks for watching and i wish you the best on all of your projects and future endeavors [Music]

Channel: 3D Printer Academy

Views: 1,751,590

Keywords: solar tracker, 3d printed, 3d print, diy, electronics, simple, ender 3, cr10, solar panel, project

Id: Oj1E7o7J3qc

Length: 4min 23sec (263 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021