AVR microcontroller based Solar tracking



This is a power generating method from sunlight. This method of power generation
is simple and is taken from natural resource. The aim of the project is to set the
solar panel for maximum power generation using the maximum sunlight available.
A stepper motor system is used for tracking maximum intensity of light. When there
is decrease in intensity of light, this system automatically changes its direction to
get maximum intensity of light.
Here we are using two sensors in two directions to sense the direction of
maximum intensity of light. The difference between the outputs of the sensors is
given to the AVR microcontroller unit.
It will process the input voltage from the comparison circuit and control the
direction in which the motor has to be rotated so that it will receive maximum
intensity of light from the sun. The power generated from this process is then stored
in a lead acid battery and is made to charge an emergency light and is made to glow
during night. The ATmega8535 is a low-power CMOS 8-bit microcontroller based on
the AVR enhanced RISC architecture. ATmega8535 has such features as 8 KB of insystem
programmable flash memory (i.e. , read-while-write capabilities), 512-byte
EEPROM,512-byte SRAM, 32 general-purpose input/output (I/O) lines, 32 generalpurpose
working registers, three flexible timers/ counters with compare modes,
internal and external interrupts, a serially programmable USART, a byte-oriented
two-wire serial interface, an 8-channel, 10-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC)
with optional differential input stage with programmable gain ,a programmable
watchdog timer with internal oscillator, an SPI serial port, and six softwareselectable
power-saving modes. The AVR core combines a rich instruction set with
32 general –purpose working registers.