I Built a Sun Tracking Solar Charger 

I'm glad RU-vid recommended this to me

I sincerely hope the algorithm is kind to you and this video gains traction - the idea and creation of the panel system as well as the production quality is fantastic!

Beautiful project. Just call it art if you don't think it fulfills the requirements! I'm sure many people would love one on their windowsill just to see it open in the morning and follow the sun all day.

Love the design with more cables and less pcbs. allways reminds me of the old guidance computers you see in cold war era missiles

algorithm gods need to blow your channel up, this video is stunning !!

This is exactly what I want to do: constructing and developing new things. Thank you for the video

I can't believe you didn't include a time-lapse of it actually working and tracking the sun!

Very nice project! As an electronics engineer I am jealous of your mechanical design. Only think I would suggest is using thinner wires for your digital signals. I for example use wires from CAT6 cables and they would be much thinner than yours. Thanks for the video!

Very nice design! I loved the iterative work that you did and took the time to share. Thanks for sharing!

Designing and building things like this by yourself is one of the best feelings in the world. I've done a bunch of smaller projects combining 3d printing, laser cutting, electronics and software and it's just so much fun. Very inspiring video, thank you for taking your time to make it!

Brilliant Design! I didn't realize this was a small channel until I checked the Description, I hope you get tons of subscribers! I always enjoy watching fellow tinkerers smarter than me design their own projects!

great stuff dude, keep going. great design. May the youtube gods bless you

This is fantastic! Amazing quality, earned a new sub

You got in the algorithm and deservedly so, congrats, got this recommended just as I opened and the video and of course the project itself are so cool

Having a huge version of this would just insane to me

I enjoyed each moment watching this video, you are really amazing man! keep going!

Wow, fantastic design and engineering! Excellent video as well. Keep these coming, I'm subscribed!

This is seriously neat af!!!!! Amazing content

Woow! Such a cool project!

Great invention and great ideas. I'm proud of you.

Great project! I really like the step by step video concept. You've got a new subscriber and I wish you many more.

Amazing job! Great work!

Very fun to see proof of concept and prototyping

pls algorithm gods this guy is amazing pls help him grow

Absolutely Amazeballs!!! What a great video and a great build!!

Absolutely amazing stuff! Can't wait to see more of your designs

Quite good approach ❤

Bruh i swear continue uploading you'll be one of big youtubers

Very, very nice! You are obviously very skilled in industrial design and I am happy to see that :-). You have a great day and thank you for sharing.

It is a next level vedio, Great work and effort, may your channel grow big and you earned another sub

Well done, the world needs brilliant people like you!

Absolutely incredible. I’m just getting into robotics and Arduino and seeing cool projects like these is inspirational.

A single Sunpower Maxeon C60 5x5" cell is 3.6 watts and can be split into 3 and connected in series to minimize the cutting loss while tripling the voltage (3x0.6v at peak power output) for a bit easier conversion. The cell is also copper backed with no front contacts adding to the active area and allowing it to be much more rugged than normal solar cells. I've successfully ran these cells through a desktop laminator for waterproofing. A booster at 80% eff can then deliver around 2.88w from it. Two such cells can do a full 5w charging. If two cells are split you get 3.6v at peak power output from a 6s configuration. The hard part is the 1.9 amps current output which is double what the cheaper micro boosters can handle. High current, low voltage is not ideal for a boosting charge controller either. It is however the most efficient you can get in terms of power per area and these cells are very popular in folding camping chargers as the angle of incidence is not important with them. The cells are antireflective and very good at collecting light at less than perfect angles.

I love this video!!, dude you are amazing...al the work and brains you put in this project!!

Glad to see im not the only one attemting to build a small solar generator like this. I've been building a little more practical version than youre's for the past year

Very cool usage of the OLED screen. I like that you can see what the metrics are without having to connect an external device.

Keep them coming .good content

Wow, what a great little device you created! 🤩 Excellent presentation. Excellent work. Really lovin' it! 🥰

Awesome engineering! Very enjoyable to watch

I appreciate you saying this isn’t a climate solution right at the top of the video. It makes it easier to enjoy this as a little bit of an escapist break.

Such a nice build! Thank you very much for sharing this awesome video

Fantastic work, thank you for sharing

great video! explained perfectly

Finally something cool to watch

Great video to teach junior engineers in looking for problems

Wow! Thankyou for this project! You’ve gained a subscriber :-)

Great video!

Real cool looking project

this is amazing!

Great design. Actually we are talkin about the idea a year ago and then put it aside... Nice to see someone actually make one!

AMAZING video topic!!!!

Best introduction.

Awesome video

I love videos just like this, 3d printing and engineering ❤

how do you only have 67subscribers?? this video has the same quailty as ones that people with like 500k make

seen less than a minute and i immediately want to build that mechaical device 😍

Very nice and inspirational

Would love to see a video where you compare the power usage of the controller and motors to the gain in power generation that they provide. When space is at a premium, solar tracking makes more and more sense

So nice!

Thanks youtube for recommendation ❤😊

Amazing! Great engineering!

Make this man a multi million sub youtuber NOW!

I love this. i need to make one myself!

Maybe we can buy this Solar charger soon. I will buy instantly 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

0:27 such a beautiful view

Бесподобно! Нигде такого ещё не видел!

Very nice!!! Great Job!!

Ah you Superman Love It Sincerely Ejike

I LOVE IT !! 😍

Would love to have a brain capable of making this sort of thing. Brilliant work!

Great work congrats

"I think it is possible to determine the elevation angle using GPS location and time." GOOD JOB!

Awesome man!

This looks like something from a sci-fi game, very cool!

comment for the algorithm, keep up the great work!

Awesome!

Wunderbar!👏

That looks Cool!!! but so many things can be simplified like the need of the slip ring could have been eliminated and just programmed so that after it hit 360 it rotatedin th opposite direction to track the sun, still it look super cool

I've been wanting to create something like this, that tracks the sun with a mirror or other reflective surface, to get some light into my house in the wintertime

Wow I got to make one but without your overkill Arduino Nano.

that is the most solarpunk panel ive ever seen!

More videos like this❤

This is *shockingly* cool! Hehe.

excellent😍😍😍

Thanks for the rec RU-vid new sub.

as a scaleable design say you make it designed to drop from over 500 ft even 1000 a lil parachute with a meshtastic on the bottom integrated but also connectable external antenna 📡 🛰️ wires then you fire whole thing into sky with fiberglass reinforced PVC pipe air cannon and ill need at least 10 so they can be launched from SUV self right and automated communication with eachother drive around town deploying them as a test for a mars mission making lines of valuable communication that's self sufficient in no time with remote protection of it's hide mode via long range repeaters communication to avoid detected storms etc

Awesome

Love when youtube recommends me smaller channels!

Reminds me of the ones in No Mans Sky game. I have about 4 outside my base. Great to see! Thanks. Laurie. NZ😅

Great project and definitely something I'd love to recreate, most likely a bit bigger though. Too bad for the low power output but that is most likely related to the way you use the solar panels. Solar panels have a "maximum power point" with a given light intensity. I estimated the panels to be 6 cm squared so that results in 0.06 * 0.06 * 4 = 0.0144 m2 and with 1 kW solar energy per m2 and 20% efficiency, these panels add up to 2.88 W of energy at absolute max. I tried some of those small panels but was never able to get more than ~ 50% of the calculated power out of them and this is most likely due to cheaper (out of spec ?) cells being sold to hobbyist but also has to do with the effective area of the cells and the fact that those small MPPT charger circuits are not working at optimum efficiency. Unfortunately it is hard to get hold of a proper low power MPPT charger. Even the electronics in a lot of those solar powered power banks don't have this. Another issue is the parallel wiring of the solar panels. Placing panels in parallel may result in one panel consuming the power produced by the other panel. I had one of these 'strap on your backpack solar charger' units that had 4 panels wired in parallel. When measuring all panels separately I got about double the amount of power compared to the standard delivered situation with all panels wired in parallel. Wiring all panels in series will most likely give you more power. A higher voltage also means you get less power loss from the 1N4007 diode in series with your panels. But this does mean you need a buck converter to regulate the voltage down to 5V for the charger circuit. Still a very nice project. Reminds me of the solar tracking station we had at my technical college.

A common method for sun tracking is to put a pillar between the photo sensors. If the array is misaligned, the pillar casts a shadow on some of the sensors.

this is awesome! i bet you could overcome some of the movement resistance in the lifting mechanism by using lighter gauge wires. those look pretty heavy for the low voltage/current application of micro solar.

Cool!!!

you can reduce the breadboard space if you remove the relay from the module board or even use a mosfet instead

You could increase the efficiency of the light sensors by reducing them to 1, placing it in a tube pointing at the ideal solar pane (so that only if directly pointing at the sun does it directly 'see' the sun getting most light'), and letting software figure out what direction the sun is in by AB testing going up and down and left and right seeing if more light is received. You can control for cloud providing shade by comparing to charge levels, since light will fall off fast for the sensor but not for the panels if the sun is off ideal axis. Why this is better is because its self-calibrating once the software is written, and you only need 1 switch. Heck, you could get rid of the switches entirely by tilting the panels 5 or so degrees back, away from the sun, and measuring the voltage provided by each panel, and let the software move towards whatever panel provides the most power until the increase of one panel is negated by the other panels losing more collective power (from overturning, passing by the ideal point). just before this point would be directly aimed at the sun with the most efficient panels. This would even correct for one panel being damaged or old, it would automatically prioritize the point that provides the most power.

You need to incorporate a voltage step up circuit to that creation

First time I made solar tracking contraption in Stationeers. I was so proud myself 😅. But it used math formula for calculating solar panels rotation.

Dam bro! Epic! What do you do for a living I have to know?

First of all, this is very good quality content, you deserve a lot. This being said. 4:31 4:31 that’s not 120 degrees and it’s kinda making me mad😂 Jk man, keep it up love your content

could you be able to share code and pcb assembly detail ?? This project is very interesting. Thanks for your sharing