Finding Fëanor

Project Overview

The primary drawback of solar panels as a commercially viable energy harvesting application is the high cost per watt energy. Currently, the best consumer solar modules are able to achieve an efficiency of 24%, meaning that about 24% of incident solar radiation is converted to usable electrical energy. That figure is astounding if one examines previous maximum efficiency in consumer models throughout the technology's development.

This success aside, our group believes that the core issue of high cost per energy harvested is still not being addressed in a practical way, which is the motivation behind our project, Finding Fëanor. A portion of the inefficient energy conversion stems from the changing angle of incident sunlight with the respect to a given solar panel. The closer to 0˚ between the face of the solar panel and path of sunlight, the more optimum the collection is. The problem with current products on the market is that most are static panels that cannot change in response to the changing angle, driving their already low efficiency even lower.

Our solution is to build an Arduino-controlled system that allows for two degrees of freedom of rotation. This would allow a panel in almost any setting or application to be dynamically adjusted to the changing incident angle of light. While doing preliminary research, we came across a project almost identical in motivation and scope. We decided it would be beneficial to replicate this project before we start our own development so we can learn the process of controlling a motor. This will allow us to approach our own design ideas with expectations of what will and will not work.

Team Members

• John Fordice
• Zach Pewitt
• Sam Donaldson
• Will Luer (TA)

Objectives

A successful project will require:

• 1. Replication of the project found on Hackster to see where it can be improved.
• 2. Implementation of photoresistors that allow an Arduino unit to calculate the incidence angle.
• 3. A control algorithm for a double-step motor system based on data taken from the photoresistors and processed by the arduino.
• 4. Power to the system using a wall adapter.
• 5. A scale-able design.

Challenges

Challenges that we predict:

Mechanical

• Designing grippers able to grasp and rotate the cube. It's unlikely we will be able to grip the cube with the surface with PLA filament, so we need some sort of foam surface to provide traction. We also need to make sure that when the cube is released by the gripper it is able to freely rotate.
• Ensuring the grippers rotate exactly 90 degrees so the cube can rotate cleanly and subsequent moves will be able to be performed. Given we are using stepper motors, ensuring that the position of the steppers is zeroed before we start performing moves is important.
• Trying to get the individual moves to take as little time as possible. The steppers that we are considering are relatively high torque and low power
• Designing a convenient way for the cube to be inserted into the device and exit the device. We could possibly use some kind of platform on a screw that is able to raise and lower the cube out of the device.
• Designing circuitry to connect the Pi (The Pi can’t deliver enough power or pins to drive all the necessary servos and steppers) Right now the servos will need one pin each (4 pins total) and the steppers need 4 pins each (16 pins total) that is a total of 20 pins, and the Pi has 17 GPIOs. We need a different method for driving the steppers than the ULN2003 drivers that come with them, or additional circuitry to drive all the inputs. For now we will try and drive the ULN2003 boards with two 8 bit shift registers, which will use 4 pins total, with the servos, that totals 8 pins. however, we are then limited in step speed, which may mean we have to invest in additional hardware, like the Adafruit motor HAT.
• Finding a way to power both the Pi and the actuators from a wall adapter.

CS

• Finding a suitable open source algorithm that we can adapt to our robot to solve the cube.
• Making sure the camera can distinguish the color patterns on each side of the cube and store each face's patterns to memory. We also may be able to detect the colors with the grippers in the way, we may not. That will require some experimentation.
• Design code that can take that algorithm and translate it to what the robot can do. (The robot’s current design can only act on 4 faces at any given time. To access the other two, the cube must be rotated). We must make sure we know the position and orientation of the cube at all times so we know where to go next for our next action.

Safety

• Mechanical safety should not be too much of an issue given the relatively small size of our design.Safety regarding moving parts should also not be an issue as this project will be designed to move slowly in order to get accurate readings on the light sensitive photo-resistors.

• Electrical safety may be a larger issue especially if the shell of our device is comprised mostly of metal. Electrical safety will be crucial because we will be utilizing wall plugs which provide a voltage relatively dangerous to humans.

Budget

• Raspberry Pi — From lab - This is the brains of the operation. It both computes the algorithm to solve the cube and sends commands to the servos.
• Camera (Arducam) — $14.99 - This camera should be able to recognize the colors on the cube to put them into the algorithm.
• Gripper rotation servos - $27.99 - These servos rotate the grippers, turning the faces on the cube.
• Servo driver hat - $23.53 - This is our servo motor controller, capable of taking input from the pi and turning it into servo rotation.
• Servo motors — $11.98 - these mini servos are the actuators for the individual grippers.
• 1" #5 machine screws - used for assembling the build.
• Lab power supply
• Total: $78.49 + $0 shipping (purchased through Amazon prime)