Solar Panel Tracking Project

This project was a pretty difficult one and required a lot of teamwork, my team had to analyze numerous lines of data on the suns path over the region to find the most optimal path for our solar panel to track. After that step was done, we had assigned roles for our team and what we wanted to do. Our groups idea was a very challenging one to try and come up with and make work, In the beginning I tried to tell my team that our idea wouldn’t be efficient, due to the physics of having a counter weight fall enough in a 14 hours' time cycle, within the space constraints we had as well as the amount of torque we would need to produce. At the end of the day our goal for the project wasn't to create a unique solution but one that would be efficient, consistent, and reliable. Sadly, I was out voted, and my team choose to go unique instead of what we actually needed to do for our clients and their wants and needs. 

Even though I wasn't the happiest with my groups decision to go for a unique design instead of a realistic design, I choose to take on the hardest part which was figuring out the physics of the gear train and designing it. Which I ended up having to put countless hours into, I had to go into more advanced physics than I was used to. The most relevant thing I had to do was research and study all the physics of a brake, in order to slow down the falling weight enough to turn this gear train, while being heavy enough to produce enough torque in the end. I slowly found that this was possible but only for a day or two. The brake pads would wear too fast and would need constant adjustment, which went against one of the key criteria we needed to meet which was on a day, the farmers needed to spend less than 60 seconds to get it going. 

I had to get the very difficult task of then going to my teammates and telling them that it wasn't going to work in the end and that it just wasn't possible to pull off. This was probably the most difficult part of the project because I already didn't feel respected by my group members, and they said to me that I got the math wrong and that it could be done. They then decided it would be a good idea to spend more hours in the last couple days trying to do the math but ended up coming to the exact same conclusion as me. So, in the end, we had to recommend that our design to not be used and had to talk about how "we" choose to go for unique instead of following a simpler path to get all of the design specification and conditions we needed to achieve correct.