Week 8

Goals: Continue Prototype Testing and Reassemble Solar Cells
Throughout the duration of this week, the group continued to work on the prototype and to gather data. Everything worked well except for the fact that we needed four solar cells to be able to generate enough voltage that could be picked up with a voltmeter. Unfortunately, the need for four solar cells meant that it was too heavy to be moved by an servo coded by an Arduino chip. Therefore we compromised and decided to move it ourselves and manually move it a certain degree every hour. Everything seemed to be working well until when we reached the end of the testing and the prototype that was sitting on the ground was picked up by the wind and thrown over to the other side. The force shattered the fragile solar cells and completely ruined the prototype. Before this happened, we were able to gain a lot of data for our project but we weren’t able to finish up those results. Therefore, this week in the lab we worked on making a second prototype that will hopefully work better for us in future testing. Pictured below in Figure 1 is one of the group members, Abbey, working to reassemble the new panel of solar cells, The group will gather the rest of the information needed over the weekend or the next time that there is a sufficient amount of sun in order to complete testing and data gathering. One main difference between the original prototype and the new one is the cords that secure the solar cells to the board. This was done in the hopes of better protecting the cells should wind be an issue on the second day of testing. Now we will put our latest prototype to work and hope for even better results than last time!

Figure 1: Abbey Working on Solar Cells

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