The “LED3″ light sensor works very well. It is sensitive, accurate, and cheap. A couple of years ago I had devised a simple solar charge controller I called “Shunt 2″. I thought it would be a good idea to combine them into a single PC board called the LED4.
Note! I no longer sell the LED4 as it was replaced by the much more capable LED3X. Ok, the LED3X doesn’t have a charge controller but this isn’t really required to run the tracker.
The design philosophy for this tracker was to make it more robust and self contained. I included a charge controller for rechargeable batteries intending them to be NiCds to run the actuators. Since the charger is there it might as well be capable of running a large PV panel with lead acid batteries.
Note! this charger is not intended to charge the expensive system batteries. Leave that job to the high end smart charger such as those by Trace, Outback, and others.
It can also run a very small PV panel to charge the local NiCds or NiMH batteries. These batteries work well over a wide temperature range.
I will test the ability of the sensors to be at the end of a long cable. I will test this using 1000′ of 4 wire telephone cable. 8 wire Cat5 cable should also work with the extra wires driving the actuators.
With the use of long Cat5 cable the main board can be inside a heated battery room. Of course you still have to run the heavy gauge main charging wire pair to the battery room. The advantage of having the batteries in a heated room is temperature compensation won’t be needed.
Read More Source: http://www.redrok.com/electron.htm#led3x Thank you.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Electronic Control.
