Analog solar tracker
Jun - Dec 2024
A solar tracker with no microcontroller anywhere in the control loop - the whole thing is op-amps.
- Embedded & Hardware
- My role
- 3D modelling and the analog electronics.
- Stack
- Analog PID (op-amps) · PWM motor drive · Altium (dual-layer PCB) · SolidWorks
What I built
A single-axis tracker built entirely from analog parts: a PID compensator made of op-amps drives the motor through PWM, with nothing programmable in the loop. The electronics are on a dual-layer PCB designed in Altium; the enclosure is SolidWorks.
Doing it in pure analog was the point — it forces you to understand the control loop rather than tune it in firmware.
My role. 3D modelling and the analog electronics.