Solar Energy, Vol.174, 826-836, 2018
New low-cost solar tracking system based on open source hardware for educational purposes
In this paper, due to the detected educational demands regarding automatic control and training in management of solar tracker systems, a small prototype based on low cost open source hardware and computer vision is built to test the control algorithms developed in Mathematica and Simulink. The new prototype has been developed with the aim of being a powerful tool for a wide range of applications regarding to the learning of automatic in solar energy. Finally, its educational application is discussed.
Keywords:Solar energy;Solar tracker;Automatic control and computer sciences;Computer vision;Low cost;Raspberry pi;Educational tool;Open source