Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Over the past two weeks we have propelled our project to place in which we can be
collecting data within a matter of a few more hours of work. We have our servo system soldered
and coded. We have been successful in having all three servos move at the same time, which
will be crucial to decreasing the amount of time needed to search for the point of most light and
to allow more time for the system to stay still collecting the most energy as possible.
Additionally, we achieved in getting the digital UV light sensor working. Next for coding will
be creating the program that will collect the point of most light to then position the tree system
there, and we know this will be simple now that we have each component working.
As for the structure, we have printed out the first branch of the tree and the other is
currently in queue to print (Figure 1). The flexible filament was having a hard time extruding
through the printer head because the gear system was having issue gripping the softer filament.
Thus, in order to have a branch system to allow us to print as soon as possible we printed the
branches out of regular PLA for starters. We have plans that we will reprint the branches with
flexible filament once we have some data, and the texture of the filament will not change the data
Additionally, we decided to trim down our size for the tree. We will now be constructing
a ten panel tree as opposed to the fifteen panel tree. What this will do is allow for simple pivot
As for the specifics of the coding for the servos, the main issue was in the type of servo
we were using. Previously, we were using High Torque servos (Figure 2) but when we switched
them to an ordinary Adafruit micro servo everything worked smoothly (Figure 3). And
furthermore, we were able to create a more constant current by soldering the servo HAT allowing
LAB NOTEBOOK 8 3
a more constant flow to access the servos allowing the servos to move more consistently. And
like weve previously stated after successfully doing all of this we were able to code the pi so
that multiple servos could run simultaneously. We also repurchased a digital UV light sensor
(Figure 5) instead of the previous analog ones (Figure 4) because we discovered that the
We will be able to put these two different components together: the servos and the
sensors, for us to
Figure 5 New 5-pin VEML UV Sensor that is more compatible for Raspberry Pi.
LAB NOTEBOOK 8 6
As stated in our last Lab Notebook, we have not collected any data. We are still in the
process of forming our design so we can construct our PVTree for testing. But the quantitative
data we plan on collecting is the amount of solar energy collected when we change the different
angles at which the panels will be set and program different pattern at which our tree will move
in accordance to sunlight. This past week we actively integrated a LabQuest to collect our data so
we no longer have to create the data collection system ourselves. If we decide later to best
streamline the process, that is always an option, but for now this is what we will be using. Using
the Current Probe we can measure amperage and using the Volt Probe we can measure the
Figure 6 The LabQuest, the device we plan on using for the data collection.
LAB NOTEBOOK 8 2
Figure 7 The Current and Differential Voltage probes that we will be attaching onto the
LabQuest to successfully collect data.
LAB NOTEBOOK 8 3
References
Cockfield. B. (2015). Two Axis Solar Tracker. Retrieved October 25. 2016 from:
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/25/two-axis-solar-tracker/
Dimitrokalia, E., Mackrilla, J., Jones G., Ramachersb Y., Caina R. (2015). Moving away from
flat solar panels to PVTrees: exploring ideas and peoples perceptions. Retrieved
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/environment/carbon/solar_trees/downloads/proceeding
_paper2015.pdf
Sarokin. J. (2014). How to: Build a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi. [Video File]. Retrieved
Verma, N., Mazumder, S. (2014). An Investigation of Solar Trees for Effective Sunlight Capture
Using Monte Carlo Simulations of Solar Radiation Transport. Retrieved September 27,
2016 from:
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/68744/Navni_Verma_Hayes_Research_
Forum15.pdf?sequence=1
Zhr, M., Friedrich, D., Kloth, T. Y., Goldmann, G., & Helmut Tributsch, H. (2010). Bionic
Photovoltaic Panels Bio-Inspired by Green Leaves. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49293285_Bionic_Photovoltaic_Panels_Bio-
Inspired_by_Green_Leaves