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Computer-driven Heliostat
Follow the sun or the stars
A heliostat is a device that tracks moving objects in the sky. This way you are able to extract the maximum amount of sunlight, take a series of photos of a moving planet or track a satellite for the best radio or TV reception with a dish. In this article we describe a simple heliostat that uses two servo motors. The servos are controlled via a PC program. This project shows an example for a heliostat, built using two servo motors. The position of the sun with respect to time and the location on Earth is calculated using a mathematical model. The result is used to drive the servos and make them point in the direction of the sun.
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