More Solar PV Tracking and Wireless Communications

Day 4 of #Snowdonbuild.

For the last couple of days we have been working on a simple project which illustrates the capability of the Nanode network applications node and attempts to put together a complete end to end demonstration.

We have chosen a small scale solar PV module monitoring system - which we first started on at the Pachube Hackathon back on April 8th/9th. We are now combining the solar energy monitoring and automated sun tracking with a wireless link and using a Nanode to get the data back to the openenergymonitor EmonCMS webserver.

The day started early with the development of the sun tracking algorithm. I decided to use a quick search method by incrementing the tracking servo position by 10 degrees searching for the maximum solar input. Once this maximum was found, the servo was returned to this position, and every minute a fine search of +/-5 degrees either side of the maximum was searched 1 degree at a time to find a new maxima.

Part of the problem was powering the unit and booting from cold when the panel first starts to get sun in the morning. I'm part way to a solution using a super capacitor (5.5V 1F) to hold sufficient charge from the panel, to allow the Arduino/Nanode to do a clean boot, and angle the panel into the sun.

To help us with this, we know that the sun always appears at roughly the same position in the morning, so at dusk we return to this position, in readiness for the next day.

Included on the rig is a 3.6V NiMH battery pack made up from 3 x AAA cells. The intention is that this acts as an energy store/buffer and holds sufficient charge to keep the Nanode running from day to day. I have not looked in detail at the energy budget/balance - as the main thrust of this project was to produce a simple solar tracker demonstrator with energy output monitoring which illustrates the control and monitoring capabilities of the Nanode.

Another potential problem is that the servo gobbles power to maintain position. A quick fix would be to use a PNP transistor in the +ve supply to the servo, and turn this off from a digital I/O line when the servo is not being updated. The friction in the reduction gear train should be sufficient to hold a lightweight solar panel in place.

Whilst I was sorting out the powering and tracking algorithms, Glyn Hudson was writing some code to get the solar tracking and power data out via a Jeenodes wireless link and from there up to the openenergymonitor EMONCMS web server.

My tracker produces a simple comma separated serial string, and Glyn wrote a Jeenodes transmitter programme, which receives this serial string, converts it into the packet format used by Jeenodes and sends it across the wireless link.

At the other end, a Nanode with a Jeenode wireless module acts as the receiver - decoding the over-air packets and converting them back into integer type data for pushing up to the EmonCMS web server.

Glyn has made a short YouTube of the Solar Tracker
showing it perform it's quick scan of the sky to get the approximate sun position.