Heliostat - Lockdown project.

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1066
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Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#1 Post by 1066 »

Not gun related but a bit of a "lockdown" project to keep me amused. I've been trying to design a self powered Heliostat, these Heliostats are quite common in Germany and are becoming more popular as energy prices continue to increase.
The idea of a heliostat is basically a mirror that you stand in your garden so it reflect sunlight into a north facing window, of course if it's just a mirror you would need to adjust it every 10 minutes as the sun moves round, so a heliostat is a mechanical means of adjusting the mirror so the reflection stays in the same place. All the heliostats I have seen have been complicated computer controlled things driving linear actuators and programmed with sidereal time and astro tables.

I'm trying to go the other way - very basic. This starts with a couple of small solar cells driving a small geared 12v dc motor, this can be arranged to track the sun. I've then used that to drive the reflecting mirror, geared down 2:1 so the mirror revolves at half the speed of the solar tracker.

Using just a single axis system to keep if simple I can't get it exactly right but I'm pleased with the project so far. The next job will be to make a cam system to compensate for the vertical error.
Here's a time lapse video of progress so far.
https://youtu.be/qqF_GgdUcmg
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Alpha1
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#2 Post by Alpha1 »

Cool.
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#3 Post by Dellboy »

like that
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#4 Post by bradaz11 »

i need one of these to save half my lawn
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#5 Post by Ovenpaa »

We pass one on the edge of a farm from time to time, it is probably about 6m x 4m so a reasonable size.
/d

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1066
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#6 Post by 1066 »

Another little solar tracker project - this is a video about how the simple solar trackers I've made in the past work. This system can be scaled up to carry a decent sized solar panel or water heating panel. Tracking the sun with a simple single axis tracker like this increases efficiency by around 25% over a fixed panel. Increased complexity of a two axis tracker only increases output by another 8% at our latitude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw4uEsEjbxA
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#7 Post by Dellboy »

What printer are you using keep thinking i 'need ' one
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Re: Heliostat - Lockdown project.

#8 Post by 1066 »

Dellboy wrote:What printer are you using keep thinking i 'need ' one
I've got two - the yellow parts for the tracker were printed on my old Tevo Tarantula - this was a bargain basement kit that needed building from scratch and cost less that £200 around 3 years ago, my newer one is a Creality CR10S-pro. I've had it for about a year and cost about £500, it was almost ready built and is a larger machine.

Both print well and I use the old Tevo more than the CR10. If you loved playing with meccano as a kid then you would probably get on alright with a kit but most printers now seem to come almost ready to go.

The Ender 3 for £250-£300 always seems to get a good write-up.
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