hbg6@citek.mcdphx.mot.com (10/31/90)
Posted for a friend ---------------------------------- Does anyone out there know of a SIMPLE system that would make a solar oven track the sun? I have to deal with two axis, the oven rotates around the vertical axis, and the reflector tilts up and down. Maybe the combined creativity of the net can come up with something that will do the job. Thanks in advance, Ed ------------------------------------ ..................................................................... reply to 'from' address; hbg6@citek.mcdphx.mot.com NOT the 'sender' line address! Someday my sysadm will decide this is a 'real' problem. :-) ..................................................................... All opinions expressed are mine and not Motorolas, their loss. .....................................................................
siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (siegman) (11/01/90)
You don't say how much electronics and other stuff will be acceptable in your system; but I believe the practice in some solar systems is not to attempt to "track the sun" with a feedback system, but rather to put some simple data about the sun's position versus time into a computer memory and just "point at the sun", open loop.
dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell) (11/01/90)
>Does anyone out there know of a SIMPLE system that would make >a solar oven track the sun? I have to deal with two axis, the OK, here's a crude ASCII sketch, showing how to do it with *one* tracking axis. Pardon the liberties taken with angles of reflectance! * (Sun) . . . / . /. Heliostat mirror. Rotates on an axis parallel to Earth's axis, / . angled so as to direct the Sun's light directly down the . axis of rotation towards the fixed mirror. The angle of . the mirror with the axis needs to be tweaked seasonally. . . . | Larger, fixed mirror. .| Faces North, tilted North, (in N hemisphere, of course), .| a bit off vertical. Since incident light *rotates* but . stays on-axis, this mirror doesn't have to move, __ . __ nor does the oven. | | \ | | \ |_____| \ Fixed oven. \ \ Drive axis. \ The fixed mirror could be eliminated, especially for installations at fairly high latitudes, as long as the entrance to the oven needn't be directly vertical. The fixed mirror could be tilted *back*, towards the South, if it was required to have the oven entrance horizontal... Dave