Solar Power – SunAir – Kickstarter Over The Top – 165% Funded
The SunAir Kickstarter, SwitchDoc Labs first, has been successfully concluded. As of
the close, it had 61 backers for a total of $3300 of the $2000 goal. The SunAir product will be ready to ship on January 12th.
The SunAir Product Page is here.
You can buy the SunAir product here.
All of the SunAir, SunAirPlus and Dual WatchDog boards are still on schedule for shipment as promised.
Stay tuned to the site for additional SunAir and SunAirPlus design documentation being published over the next few days.
SunAir Update
SunAir software development and documentation writing is
continuing. Yesterday, a 3D Printed Sun Tracking system used
SunAir to track a moving light (simulating the sun) for the first time. Previous versions of the software could only detect the sun on wakeup (You can see the video for the new Scan here) and not track the sun on an ongoing business.
The current tracking software can still misalign to the sun in the case of clouds. We are adding a filter to smooth out such moves and setting counters to detect if a full sun scan should be made.
The current test system consists of an Arduino Uno, a SunAir board and a stepper motor controller from the MouseAir Project. The system is powered by a battery although currently we are plugging in the Arduino directly to a computer for programming. It can be plugged into the SunAir board through the second micro USB connector for programming also. A space for a stepper motor controller is provided on the SunAirPlus board.
One of the things we will be looking at when we get the SunAirPlus board is whether we can supply additional information by using the voltage from the Solar Panel to use to point the device to the sun.
SunAirPlus
SunAirPlus is also included in this Kickstarter. The main difference between SunAir and SunAir plus is that of ease and quality of data gathering. SunAirPlus has three current/voltage sensors and an additional four channels of high quality A/D.
SunAirPlus also comes with software to build a RasPiConnect (www.milocreek.com) solar power control panel. (will be $2 on App Store in January – SunAirPlusPiConnect / SunAirPlusArduinoConnect). The SunAirPlusPiConnect has all the data assembled in a MySQL database on the Raspberry Pi with graphs, charts and analysis. Engineering Eye Candy for sure! And it let’s you really track your Solar Power system.
I envisioned something like this would be a useful tool. I knew it would come about at some point. I noodled it a bit and realized it was a significant undertaking to make it happen. Congrats! You did it.
Thank you very much! It was a pain, took much more time to do it than we thought, but it’s done.
One question, in the 50$ pledge, the boards are assembled and tested?
Thanks.
Great job!
Yes. All assembled and tested.