BMS College of Engineering

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

SOLAR PANEL CONTROLLER USING ARDUINO

Self Study - VII sem. - C sec. Shabaz Khan 1BM15ME150
Mechatronics - 16ME7DCMCT Sumuk Manjunaath 1BM15ME165
Faculty In-charge - Dr. V.Bharathi Varun Omprakash 1BM15ME175

INTRODUCTION:
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun
that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving
technologies such as solar heaters, photovoltaic Algorithm
cells, solar pumping, solar architecture, solar
power plants and artificial photosynthesis.
Although, huge solar panels have been planted
and a huge amount of money is being spent on it,
the complete utilization of the panels is not being
made due to its immobility
Therefore, the designing should be done in such a
way that the solar panel is perpendicular to the
rays of the sun at every point of the day to receive
a maximum amount of solar energy
Instead, of using LDR and considering the intensity
of sunlight we have considered the tracking of the
sunlight based on the time of the day and the
direction of the sun, as the direction of sunrise
and sunset is the same irrespective of the place.

HARDWARE IMPLENTATION:

Stepper Motor :Stepper motors are, in effect, DC

motors with a twist. The major difference Stepper
between the two is that the latter runs with
continuous flow of current where as the former Motor
Arduino Uno
runs with regular pulses of electricity. Each pulse
drives the shaft of the motor by a particular angle.
More the pulses that are fed to the motor, more
the shaft turns. Stepper motors differ from the DC
motors when their design parameters are
compared. The next sections talks about the ULN 2003-A
prominent design specifications of the stepper Motor Driver Pin Configuration
motor.

ULN2003A Motor driver: The ULN2003A device is

high-voltage, high-current Darlington transistor
arrays. It consists of seven NPN Darlington pair of
transistors that has features like high-voltage
outputs with common-cathode (CC-configuration)
clamp diodes.

ARDUINO BOARD: The Arduino UNO is an open-

source microcontroller board based on the
Microchip ATmega328P microcontroller and WORKING:
developed by Arduino.cc.The board is equipped Initially the solar panel will be facing east, during
with sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) sunrise. Over the course of the earth's rotation, the
pins that may be interfaced to various expansion solar panel aligns itself such that rays of the sun fall
boards (shields) and other circuits. The board has
14 Digital pins, 6 Analog pins, and programmable on it perpendicularly. After sunset, the solar panel
with the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development moves back to initial position(facing east). It stays in
Environment) via a type B USB cable.[4] It can be this position until next sunrise, and the cycle repeats.
powered by a USB cable or by an external 9 volt
battery, though it accepts voltages between 7 and
20 volts.