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Solar Powered Microcontroller Head

June 22, 2011 by Chris

"This is a so called autonomous kinetic sculpture from the 'famous' CawtBot family. Partly made form scrap junk, partly from new pieces. based on the Atmel AtTiny26L microcontroller. It's completeley autonomous because of solar power." The article features many pictures of the 'robot' in action as well as a brief overview of how it works.

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Smiley Driving Solar Robot

June 1, 2011 by Chris

Solar powered robotics can be difficult to design, however this article gives a great example of how to make it work. The smiley solar powered robot uses differential drive motors with an analog brain to find its way. The article has the schematic and board layout available for download and describes how the robot works. Smile and build your own!

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Solar Recorder v1

May 2, 2011 by Chris

With Solar Energy becoming more mainstream, we need to have a better understanding of the sun's movement, and the most efficient spots for solar panels to be point toward. This project shows you how to build a system that records the irradiance of the sun at specific time intervals, working as an SD card data logger.

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Building a Sun Tracker

April 11, 2011 by Chris

As the solar power industry grows, so must too sun tracking circuitry. This project gives a short but sweet example of how to build a system for sun-tracking. It's not professional grade, but it is a great place to start if you're looking to build your own sun-tracking solar panel.

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Solar Powered Wireless Security

January 17, 2011 by Chris

Home security is very important if you have a family. If you can make that security powered by renewable energy then you will really have nothing to worry about, it will always be on. This project guides you through how you can build a system that doesn't rely on the power companies. Take a look!

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Moving Vane Windmill Generator

October 21, 2010 by Chris

This project takes a unique windmill design and shows you how to generate electricity from the wind. The project is 100% DIY from top to bottom and the write-up is very in-depth. If you're curious about wind power, take a look through this project.

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Building A Breathalyzer

October 12, 2010 by Chris

If you've ever been curious about simple breathalyzer theory this project is for you. They used a MQ-3 alcohol gas sensor and an arduino board to build it. The write-up has the software, hardware and a video of the working project in action.

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DIY Weather Station

September 1, 2010 by Chris

Using off the shelf parts and a standard PIC microcontroller here's a weather station that you can access remotely. The PIC takes care of all the data acquisition and serial transmission. Hardware schematics & software are included in the project write-up. Take a look!

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Digital Thermometer Display

May 24, 2009 by Chris

This project is probably more novelty than useful, but its simplicity will get you familiar with digital thermometers. A pic is used to interpret output data and a gigantic LCD display is used to show it to us humans. Software and hardware schematics are there just for you!

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Zephy Flies For 80+ Hours Nonstop

August 20, 2008 by Chris

We previously covered the Zephyr Solar Powered UAV on PyroElectro and it's back already. Just this sunday the UAV flew nonstop for 83 hours and 37 minutes. It used rechargeable batteries for flight during the night. Both articles are linked below.

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