RESEARCH VIDEOS

Embedded System Lab Final Project, Cleveland State University. Spring 2018

ABSTRACT

Solar energy is one of the primary sources of clean and renewable energy. One of the key elements to maximize the power intake of solar panels is adjusting the solar panel angle properly such that the panel is always perpendicular to the sun. In this project a stabilization platform is designed for solar panels, which can track the sun based on online data or offline data. To control this system and handle input and outputs, a PIC16 microcontroller is selected. The angle of the solar panel at any moment is measured by a precision digital inclinometer and sent back to microcontroller as an analog input. A simple PID (Proportional – Integral – Derivative) control scheme with just a proportional gain is designed to take the input angle from inclinometer and send a PWM control signal to the motor driver hardware to drive the panel to the desired position. For testing and validation, the desired angle of the panel is set to zero. Observations proved that the control scheme with reasonable gains has good performance and disturbance rejection. It can go unstable if input sampling rate is not adequate or the gain is set too high. These two effects are shown in presented videos.

Mechatronics Lab Competition, West Virginia University. Fall 2013

This is the final project of the Mechatronics Lab MAE211. Students could use an off-the-shelve robot or design their robots using Solidworks and 3D printer. They had to use Arduino as the driver of the robot. They could use sensory feedback as Ultrasonic or light sensors to avoid obstacles and drive toward the target. Software could be fully implemented on the Arduino or implemented on MATLAB with communication line to Arduino as data acquisition module.