The Creation Method of a Solar Tracker Using the Zybo SoC

This paper presents the creation of a solar tracker robot and a solar tracking algorithm, which can be used to track the position of the Sun, this way increasing the efficiency of solar panels, by rotating them towards the Sun. The solar tracker robot is controlled by a Digilent Zybo development board, which has the Zynq-7000 SoC, which is a combination between a dualcore ARM Cortex-A9 microprocessor and an Artix 7 type FPGA. The sensors used to track the Sun are photoresistors or pirheliometric sensors. The solar tracker robot can make movements in two directions: horizontal and vertical, this way being able to track the position of the Sun precisely. Tracking precisely the position of the Sun can help increasing the efficiency of a solar panel farm. The algorithm can be extended to wind turbines also, by replacing the photoresistors or pirheliometric sensors with wind sensors.