Mad, I tried to follow your thread on this subject, but afraid it's over my head. I love reading Flux and a bunch of you guys discussing subjects that leave me in the solar dust and hoping that I might some day be able to keep up. I have always been a ( point A, point B, straight line ) kind of thinker and ( less is more ) is good. This brings me to what I believe to be the most no nonsense way of tracking our star. As you know, anything you buy from a store that has the word solar in the name is spendy and it is hard to find a friendly neighborhood solar store to buy from. So with my design, other than the solar panels, there are to small pieces you may have to send off for.
I am going to attempt to load some pics. with explanations to explain what I've done. I taking pictures to day of the hinge that is very strong and would hold a lot of panels and other than the build to show how I have made it to reset it's self. I am saving the best part for last, mainly because I will be building another "eye" and can take pictures to explain. I have searched everywhere and I'm sure this design has never been thought of. 5 watts is enough power to keep battery charge because all that is needed is for one cycle of the gate opener in a 24 hour period.
The hinge is made from a trailer axle piece( tractor supply / $10 ) and a farm gate hinge ( $3 )
The pole and pieces ( scrap yard ) is what you see. very strong. I welded a 5in. piece of slightly smaller pipe into the top of main pole. This way I can fit the main hinge assemble onto it and turn to adjust for suns path.
This is how it resets itself. On the last track it flips a on/on switch, cutting of the eye circut and throwing it to a nightwatchman photo cell with a reverse polarity on the actuator. When dark it flips back the switch, stopping the return and activates the eye.
I have searched everything on the web to make sure that this has not been thought of before.
This really works. Simple design and allows your battery to remained charged on a 5 watt panel.
It consist of 1 black funnel ( $2.95 ) a #5 welders glass, round goggle ( $5 a pair ) an LED clearance marker lamp ( $2 ) 2 nightwatchman photo cells ( $40 apiece ) electric tape, fiberglass / bondo...
Only the # 5 welders glass will work. It is not to dark but will allow the eye to read the sun but not the ambient light.
This is the wiring. It simply reverses what the NW photo cell does. The best way to describe it is that you cut the funnel down until you reach the size of the welders glass and insert the glass with glue. It needs to be where no light is allowed to enter pass the glass. Be sure to take a piece of ruff sand paper and sand the inside of the funnel until it has a flat matted surface. Glue the small end over one of the eye of the photo cell.
To make a long story short is what you want to make happen is when the sun looks over into the funnel enough to see the eye it turns off the LED witch is staring into the eye of cell #2. Cell #2 thinks it's night and activates, turning on what every you have hooked to it, up to 10 amps. I think you can figure the rest out. I just wrap the whole thing in elec. tape and in case it into what every you have on the self. I like using a large pill bottle as a mold. This month Had only 4 cloudy days. The rest I tracked the sun. If you elongated the opening of the funnel I believe you could have clouds for most of the day and if it came out for 5 seconds it would run over to position.
The one I have now ( round ) I'm good for a couple of hours of clouds. Otherwise it sets until it see's s sun again.
Next project... Large array tracker for high wind.
