Week #4 Post

Since week 1,  we've focused on revolving our design around providing the best user experience possible for the students. Each week we come into class, we tweak our idea with great care so that it will ultimately serve the students well in a learning environment. Our interface will be clear and simple and everything will load instantly with LabVIEW. It will be designed so well that no one will even consider how they might have designed it differently.

Also, some technical aspects of this project were debated and resolved. We asked ourselves, should we put our batteries in series or parallel? The group decided that perhaps we will do both so that the students can see both the voltage and current relationships of each. We also voted that the panel should be mobile on a cart of some sorts. For maximum efficency the group decided it would be best if the solar panels always faced due south at an angle of 33.5 degrees (if not properly mounted with a solar tracker). The computer keyboard will pull out from a cart drawer for convenience. The batteries and charge controller will be below the computer and the solar panels will be on top. The group also decided that it would be best if 6 and 22 gauge wires are used to make all the necessary connections throughout the system. An inverter will be used between the charge controller and the meterbus if the group decides to do both AC and DC current and voltage readings. To make sure that the solar panels and the DPDT relays don't fry, we will place fuses between them (not sure yet what Amp fuse). Also a 25 Amp fuse will be placed between the 12 Volt battery and the Charge Controller (again to prevent frying the charge controller or blowing up the battery).

As we approach Week 5 our hope is to bring our project to life in some kind of visual software (AutoCAD or Google Sketch Up). There is still a lot of unexplored areas that our group needs to cover and it should be exciting in uncovering the mysteries of our solar panel design.