Automatic Solar Tracker Using 3D Printed Parts and Arduino

Hello people, In this project we are going to make a project that is related to harnessing green energy to the fullest!

Yes you heard that right i will show you how to make automatic solar tracker using arduino and 3d printed parts, when i say 3d printed parts most of the creators will be happy since it is easy for them to cope up with building phase.

Let me quickly explain to you how this project works and why did i say above we are going to harnes the energy to the fullest.

You might have installed the solar panels on your roof that will help to charge small lights or other small electronics used in home but have you every wondered how efficiently you are using the energy from the sun?

See the solar panel installed on your roof is fixed to one place and we all know that because of rotation of earth the position of sun changes very often and at a certain time of the day the solar panel is exposed to maximum sunlight thus producing maximum power output.

But have you ever thought if we align the solar panel to the direction of rotation of sun we can always get the max output throughout the day? I bet you never thought this!

Well now since i have made this project you can think of the new ways by which we can efficiently turn the panels with bare minimum power usage, well for now let us keep this topic for the upcoming project.

I will talk few things about the project that i have built, The solar tracker that i have made consists of LDR modules, that stands for light dependent resistor.

This resistors are sensitive to light and change their resistance when exposed to light i will use this to trigger the servo on 2 sides to which we are adding the solar panel that will trap the energy of the sun all the day.

I will power this project with arduino nano that is very small and also uses very less power and occupies less space compared to other such alternatives.

Arduino Nano from here

LDR sensor modules

Micro Servo

Solar Panel

Jumper Cables

Breadboard Power Rails

Arduino IDE and Programming Cable

Tinkercircuit web application to modify this model(if you wish)

Slicing software

PLA filament

3D Printer

Computer

Hot glue

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I have designed the frame for this project using Tinkercad if you wish to modify model you can do it as per your requirements.

Once i designed the model considering the size of solar panel that i will be using, I will use cura slicer to slice the model.

I will slice the model and later print it with PLA filament, the settings that i will be using to print the 2 models is shown in the cura slicer settings.

There is no need of any rafts or supports to be used at the time of slicing, Also there is no need of any post processing after the print is done.

The choice of color at the time of printing is left to you, in my case i used yellow color for the frame and the blue color to the cylinder that is connected to the horns of micro servo.

The printing will not take much longer since the parts are optimised to print faster also consuming less print material.

I will ask everyone to upload the code first before building the circuit, Connect the USB board to computer and arduino and open Arduino ide.

Copy and paste the below code to your IDE and select the proper board type(arduino nano) and the port to which your board is connected.

Note that the port number changes be sure to select the arduino nano.

Upload the code to nano and disconnect the USB cable, Now we can head over to building the circuit by following the circuit diagram.

The circuit is really simple we are using servo and LDR module

Servo has 3 pins, Vcc, Gnd and signal

I will connect the vcc and gnd to power rails on breadboard whereas the signal is connected to D4 pin on the nano board.

The 2 LDR module vcc and gnd will go to the power rails of the breadboard whereas the signal of this 2 modules are connect to A0 and A1 pin on the nano.

Now in the end connect the 5v and gnd pin from nano to power rails on the breadboard.

Test the circuit by connecting the nano board to power supply, When you expose the LDR to light the indicator led should blink if it is not you should turn the knob of potentiometer to alter the sensitivity of the sensor.

After this is complete we can install all this electronics on the 3d printed frame.

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To set all the electronics on the 3d printed frame all you have to do is use the double sided adhesive or hot glue for coupling.

I just used the power rails of the breadboard to shrink the size of the circuit, You can even more shrink the circuit using the wires.

Now connect the servo horn to the 3d printed tube and this part do not require any glue to establish the connection.

Later pour some hot glue to the frame and place the servo on this and allow to dry for some time, After it is dry we can connect the solar panel to this prolonged shaft.

The solar panel other end should be supported on top of the frame so that when the servo shaft rotates it will also rotate the panel.

This works automatically all you have to do is connect the board to USB source and keep it in front of the sunlight.

I have left the servo horn slider part open so that you can add any size solar panel equal or lesser than the size of the frame of the tracker.

To test the circuit place this tracker on the dark and turn on the flashlight, the solar panel will move to the direction of the light.

To utilize the light generated from the solar panel after installing on this solar tracker connect a multimeter and test ṭhe power output, you can expect steady output throughout the daytime.

I will place the obstacle on the LDR module so to create expose to one single LDR at a time, I have made a timelaspse of the same and you can see them in the working video below.

Hope you will use this creation to power something useful, Thank you and have a great build.

You must definitely not miss watching this video of solar tracker working, i could not take a timelapse but i filmed a video for 2 minutes and fast forwarded the video to 2x so that you can see how cool this project is.

I would recommend everyone to try building this project since you will have a chance to explore the green energy things.

This was all about this project, i think all your questions are answered since the things are explained very well.

Thanks for showing interest on this project and we can catch up later with more such interesting projects.