Hard Lessons Learned While Building a Solar RC Plane https://hackaday.com/2024/09/09/hard-lessons-learned-while-building-a-solar-rc-plane/ #autonomousaircraft #solarairplane #SolarHacks #RCairplane #ardupilot
Hard Lessons Learned While Building a Solar RC Plane https://hackaday.com/2024/09/09/hard-lessons-learned-while-building-a-solar-rc-plane/ #autonomousaircraft #solarairplane #SolarHacks #RCairplane #ardupilot
The Sunchronizer Keeps Your Solar Panel Aligned https://hackaday.com/2024/08/15/the-sunchronizer-keeps-your-solar-panel-aligned/ #linearactuator #solartracker #SolarHacks #singleaxis #solarpanel #elevation #ESP32 #solar
New Solar Spheres Claim to be Better than Solar Panels https://hackaday.com/2024/07/06/new-solar-spheres-claim-to-be-better-than-solar-panels/ #solarenergy #solarpanels #SolarHacks #News
Solar Energy Plant Creates Fuel https://hackaday.com/2024/06/29/solar-energy-plant-creates-fuel/ #solarenergy #SolarHacks #syngas
2024 Business Card Challenge: NoiseCard Judges the Sound Around You https://hackaday.com/2024/06/22/2024-business-card-challenge-noisecard-judges-the-sound-around-you/ #2024BusinessCardChallenge #Microcontrollers #STM32G031J6 #SolarHacks #contests #noise #solar #stm32
Garden Light Turned Mesh Network Node https://hackaday.com/2024/01/21/garden-light-turned-mesh-network-node/ #WirelessHacks #gardenlight #SolarHacks #Meshtastic #solar #LoRa
Sun on the Run: Diving into Solar with a Mobile PV System https://hackaday.com/2024/01/17/sun-on-the-run-diving-into-solar-with-a-mobile-pv-system/ #chargecontroller #photovoltaic #OriginalArt #SolarHacks #Interest #combiner #inverter #lithium #offgrid #trailer #mobile #solar #MC-4 #mppt #pv
Robot Sunflower Follows the Sun https://hackaday.com/2023/11/03/robot-sunflower-follows-the-sun/ #ArduinoHacks #SolarHacks #suntracker #sunflower #servo
Wireless Data Connections Through Light https://hackaday.com/2023/08/25/wireless-data-connections-through-light/ #datatransmission #visiblelight #SolarHacks #solarcell #lighting #wireless #li-fi #solar #led
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Inventor https://hackaday.com/2023/08/19/the-mysterious-case-of-the-disappearing-inventor/ #SolarHacks #solarpanel #solarcell #history #News
2023 Hackaday Prize: A Reinvented Solar Tracker https://hackaday.com/2023/08/09/2023-hackaday-prize-a-reinvented-solar-tracker/ #2023HackadayPrize #TheHackadayPrize #renewableenergy #solartracker #greenhacks #SolarHacks #solarpanel
Move Aside Solar, We’re Installing An Algae Panel
[Cody] of [Cody'sLab] has been bit by what he describes as the algae growing bug. We at Hackaday didn't know that was a disease floating around, but we'll admit that we're not surprised after the last few years. So not content to stick to the small-time algae farms, [Cody] decided to scale up and build a whole algae panel.
Now, why would you want to grow algae? There are edible varieties of algae, you can extract oils from it, and most importantly, it can be pumped around in liquid form. To top it off, all it needs is just sunlight, carbon dioxide, and a few minerals to grow. Unlike those other complicated land-based organisms that use photosynthesis, algae don't need to build any structure to hold themselves up or collect sunlight; it floats.
The real goal of the algae is to build a system known as "Chicken Hole." The basic idea is to have a self-sufficient system. The algae feed the insects, the insects feed the chickens, and so on up the chain until it reaches [Cody]. While glass would make an ideal material for the algae tubes, plastic soda bottles seem like a decent proxy for a prototype and are much cheaper. He connected around 100 half-liter bottles to form long tubes and a PVC distribution system. The algae needs to be pumped into an insulated container to prevent it from freezing at night. At first, a simple timer outlet controlled the pump to only run during the day, draining it via gravity at night. However, the algae can't heat up enough when running on cloudy, cold winter days, and it cools off. A solar panel and a temperature sensor form the logic for the pump, with a minimum temperature and sunlight needed to run.
[Cody] mentions that he can expect around 10 grams of algae per day on a panel this size in the winter. He's going to need quite a few more if he's going to scale up properly. Perhaps in the future, we'll see panels growing algae robots? Video after the break.
LEGOpunk Orrery Knows Just the Right Technics
Is the unmistakable sound of the shuffling of LEGO pieces being dug through burned into your psyche? Did the catalog of ever more complex Technic pieces send your imagination soaring into the stratosphere and beyond? Judging by the artful contraption in the video below the break, we are fairly certain that [Marian] can relate to these things.
No doubt inspired by classic orreries driven by clockwork, [Marian]'s LEGO Sun-Earth-Moon orrery is instead driven by either hand cranks or by electric motors. The orrery aims to be astronomically correct. To that end, a full revolution of a hand crank produces a full day's worth of movement.
Solar and lunar eclipses can be demonstrated, along with numerous other principals such as the tilt of the earth, moon phases, tidal locking, and more, [which can be found at the project page](https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-88534/marian/sun-earth-moon-orrery/#details).
While classical orreries predate the Victorian era, there seems to be an almost inexplicable link between orreries and the Steampunk aesthetic. But [Marian]'s orrery brought the term "LEGOpunk" to mind. Could it be? Given that there are 2305 pieces and 264 pages of instructions with 436 steps, we think so!
We've covered just a few orreries in the past, from this somewhat simple laser cut orrery to this horrifically complex and beautiful thing here.
#solarhacks #earth #lego #legotechnic #moon #orrery #sun #technic
BEAM Bird Pendant Really Chirps
[NanoRobotGeek] had a single glorious weekend between the end of the term and the start of exams. Did they buy a keg and party it up? No, in fact, quite the opposite -- they probably gained a few brain cells by free-form soldering this beautiful chirping bird pendant at 0603 instead.
The circuit is a standard BEAM project built around a 74HC14, but [NanoRobotGeek] made a few changes to achieve the ideal chirp sound. As you can see in the video after the break, it chirps for around 30 seconds and then shuts off for 1-2 minutes before starting up again.
What is better than a BEAM project? A portable one, we say. Although the chirping would probably get old pretty quickly, there's just no substitute for working so small that you can carry it around your neck and show it off.
This one is kind of a long time coming, because [NanoRobotGeek] started by breadboarding the circuit and then made a PCB version way back in 2019, which they were attempting to miniaturize with this project. We think they did a fantastic job of it, and the documentation is stellar if you are crazy enough to attempt this one. You will need a lot of blu tack and patience, and pre-tinning is your friend. Be sure to check out the demo after the break.
The name checks out, and this isn't [NanoRobotGeek]'s first foray into tiny circuit sculpture -- just take a look at all we've covered.
The usual solar cell is made of silicon. The better cells use the crystalline form of the element, but there are other methods to obtain electric energy from the sun using silicon. Forming silicon crystals, though, can be expensive so there is always interest in different solar technologies. Perovskite is one of the leading candidates for supplanting silicon. Since they use lead salts, they are cheap and simple to construct. The efficiency is good, too, even when the material is not particularly well ordered. The problem is every model science has on what should make a good solar cell predicted that orderly compounds would perform better, even though this is not true for perovskite. Now scientists at Cambridge think they know why these cells perform even in the face of structural defects.
Perovskites take their name from a natural mineral that has the same atomic structure. In 2009, methylammonium lead halide perovskites were found to act as solar cells. Conversion rates can be as high as 25.5% according to sources and -- apparently -- the cells could be as much as 31% efficient, in theory. Solar cells top out -- again, in theory -- at 32.3% although in the real world you are lucky to get into the high twenties.
Using advanced microscopy, the team found that there were two different types of disorders occurring in the material. Electrical disorganization reduces the solar energy conversion performance. However, a corresponding chemical disorder is actually advantageous for efficiency and more than makes up for the electrical disadvantage.
The researchers hope this will offer new insights into how to create even better perovskite materials for use in the solar cells of the future. We've seen this material used for things other than solar cells. There is a lot of research activity centering on these cells, so we hope to see some practical applications, soon.
[Main image: Alex T. at Ella Maru Studios via University of Cambridge research announcement]
A company named Leap Photovoltaic claims they have a technology to create solar panels without silicon wafers which would cut production costs in half. According to [FastCompany] the cells are still silicon-based, but do not require creating wafers as a separate step or -- as is more common -- acquiring them as a raw material.
The process is likened to 3D printing as silicon powder is deposited on a substrate. The design claims to use only a tenth of the silicon in a conventional cell and requires fewer resources to produce, too.
This sounds a lot like amorphous silicon cells which have been around for a while. We assume the trick is they've found a cheaper way to produce them using off-the-shelf equipment. These cells are typically lower in performance than crystalline cells. We don't know if Leap has a way to improve the solar cell's output.
Where can you get them? Not so fast. Plans are to have pilot production in 2023 with widespread availability by 2024. If the cells do produce less power per unit area, their success will depend on cutting costs so that a bigger unit is cheaper than a smaller crystalline panel. Even then, in some applications surface area matters.
The again, not all solar cells use silicon at all. You can even make some of them yourself.
#news #solarhacks #photovoltaic #silicon #solarcell #solarcells #solarenergy
Solar Power Goes Back to 1910 Tech
If you want to read about a low-tech approach to solar cells invented -- and forgotten -- 40 years before Bell Labs announced the first practical silicon solar cell, we can't promise the website, Low Tech Magazine, will be available. Apparently the webserver it is on is solar-powered, and a disclaimer mentions that it sometimes goes offline.
The article by [Kris De Decker] tells of George Cove and includes a picture from 1910 of the inventor standing next to what looks suspiciously like a solar panel (the picture above is from a 1909 issue of Technical World Magazine). His first demonstration of the technology was in 1905 and there is a picture of another device from 1909 that produced 45 watts of power using 1.5 square meters with a conversion efficiency of 2.75%. That same year, a new prototype had 4.5 square meters and used its 240-watt output to charge 5 lead-acid batteries. The efficiency was about 5%.
Of course, 5% doesn't sound so great today. But to put it in context, the original Bell solar cells in 1954 had about 6% efficiency. Oddly enough, Cove didn't set out to build solar electric generators. He was actually trying to build a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity from a wood stove.
His design used metal plugs in an asphalt substrate. One end of the three-inch plugs would get hot while the other was meant to stay cool. The temperature difference ought to create a bit of electricity and with almost 1,000 plugs in the 1.5 square meter panel, there would be enough to do something useful.
Or so Cove thought. Some early devices generated some power when exposed to heat. But changes to the plug composition caused the device to quit working when exposed to heat. However, sunlight through a violet glass did work and worked significantly better than before. Cove couldn't explain why, but we can see that Cove had stumbled onto a metallic semiconductor, not unlike a modern Schottky junction. The plugs were zinc and antimony -- something used in modern semiconductor processing -- and were capped on one end with a nickel, copper, and zinc alloy and on the other end with copper.
The article goes on to point out that simple metal solar panels could be cheaper to produce and easier to recycle. Of course, you'd need to work on getting the efficiency way up to match modern cells.
There is one disclaimer. Apparently, Cove is relatively unknown and while he has a patent issued in 1906 the patent has some misleading information in it. Add to that he was supposedly kidnapped (the police thought it was a hoax) and he spent a year in jail for stock manipulation. We don't know how much of Cove's story is true or not -- apparently [Decker] received research from a reader, but it all sounds plausible enough.
We keep hearing about alternate solar cell materials, but silicon is still the standard to beat. Most do-it-yourself panels start with a cell, but using this low-tech method could let you produce the whole thing.
Power Your Home With a Water Battery
I've stated it before on Hackaday but one of the most interesting engineering challenges posed to me this year was "how could you store enough energy to power a decent portion of a home for several hours without using batteries, all while staying within the size of a typical suburban plot?" [Quint Builds] attempts something up that alley by using solar power to pump water up onto his roof and later releasing it for power generation. (Video, embedded below.)
Earlier [Quint] had built a water collecting system using his gutters and a bell siphon but wasn't satisfied with the overall power output. Using the turbine he had created for that system, he put a 55-gallon drum on top of his roof with the help of some supporting structures. We'd like to advise the public to consult a professional before adding a large heavy weight on top of your roof, but [Quint] forges ahead after studying his trusses and determining it to be a risk he is willing to take. A solar panel runs a small pump that pumps water from a reservoir up to the top of the roof when the sun shines with a float switch in the roof barrel stopping the motor once it's full. A valve at the bottom allows water to spin the turbine and fill back into the bottom reservoir, forming a closed loop. There were a few snags along the way with prototype circuits not being fully contacted and the motor needing water cooling, an issue fixed by a custom CNC'd heat sink. The fixes for the various issues are almost as entertaining to see as the actual system itself.
It's incredible to see lights come on powered by water alone but also sobering to realize just how much water you'd need to power a typical home. Perhaps if [Quint] upgrades, he can swap out the small motor for a larger 3D printed water pump.