4.4 Mechanical Design
The main design strategy while designing the mechanical structure to mount the solar panel was to keep the design as simple as possible to avoid any complications. Aside from avoiding any complications, the design needed to allow for dual-axial rotation. This was accomplished by allowing the base that the panel is mounted on to rotate about its vertical axis, then elevate the panel off the base perpendicular to the vertical axis and allow it to pivot along its center. The combination of these two motions will allow the panel to be positioned orthogonal to the Sun.
In order to allow rotation about the vertical axis, some sort of bearing system needed to be implemented to allow for nearly frictionless movement of the mounting structure. The device chosen to accomplish this task is a Lazy Susan bearing system. A Lazy Susan allows for the rotation of two parallel planes in opposite directions about their perpendicular axis. In this case, the perpendicular axis would be …show more content…
The control unit of the project is an embedded system as it is embedded into a small circuit with a microcontroller. The software of the project is developed with the knowledge we gained from the software engineering course. The Arduino programming language used in the project is quite similar to C programming and Java programming. Those courses helped us to write the program for the project. The embedded systems course teaches about Pulse Width modulation, analog to digital conversion, and the use of general purpose I/O. This course helped us to use the microcontroller. The charging unit implemented in this project dealt with concepts and ideas covered in both Electronics I and II, such as feedback and the functionality of certain electronic components and devices. The knowledge from the Control Systems course was also instrumental in the design of this
The main design strategy while designing the mechanical structure to mount the solar panel was to keep the design as simple as possible to avoid any complications. Aside from avoiding any complications, the design needed to allow for dual-axial rotation. This was accomplished by allowing the base that the panel is mounted on to rotate about its vertical axis, then elevate the panel off the base perpendicular to the vertical axis and allow it to pivot along its center. The combination of these two motions will allow the panel to be positioned orthogonal to the Sun.
In order to allow rotation about the vertical axis, some sort of bearing system needed to be implemented to allow for nearly frictionless movement of the mounting structure. The device chosen to accomplish this task is a Lazy Susan bearing system. A Lazy Susan allows for the rotation of two parallel planes in opposite directions about their perpendicular axis. In this case, the perpendicular axis would be …show more content…
The control unit of the project is an embedded system as it is embedded into a small circuit with a microcontroller. The software of the project is developed with the knowledge we gained from the software engineering course. The Arduino programming language used in the project is quite similar to C programming and Java programming. Those courses helped us to write the program for the project. The embedded systems course teaches about Pulse Width modulation, analog to digital conversion, and the use of general purpose I/O. This course helped us to use the microcontroller. The charging unit implemented in this project dealt with concepts and ideas covered in both Electronics I and II, such as feedback and the functionality of certain electronic components and devices. The knowledge from the Control Systems course was also instrumental in the design of this