Solar Tracker Report

You have received feedback on your voltage divider reports; in general, they were well done, but often incomplete. That is, it was not uncommon to see images of a build, but no schematic. Or, there would be some mention of voltage dividers, but no actual connection to theory—an equation, for example, and how it might relate to the actual joystick. For this report, I’d like you to try and think about bringing the practical together with the theory together with the data you collected and, finally, the meaning of that data and the results of your work. You can do it.

To help you, I have asked several of your colleagues if I could share their reports as examples that were exceptionally well written. I would encourage you to look at these reports as you work on your solar tracker reports.

I expect this round of reports to be individually written. I would like to see you each engage the material of the laboratory, as this report brings together a number of concepts from throughout the term.

In The Report

For your solar tracker, you have a wealth of things to write about. Your report might be structured as follows:

  1. Introduction. Write this last. It should introduce what you built, the theory, and a brief indication of the results of your work.

  2. Apparatus. This is the physical build. Introduce what you built, with what components, and images, Fritzing breadboard, and schematic diagram of your build. The best descriptions of apparatus do a good job of describing the build, clearly, in words as well as pictures.

  3. Method and Theory. This describes what you did and how you did it (but not the results). In this report, you might introduce the idea of calibrating one sensor against another—so, introduce the theory of how you map one value to another. You might also introduce voltage dividers (getting down into the actual theory of how they work—there are equations!), as you needed one for your LDR.

  4. Results. This is where you would discuss your results. Specifically, how you collected data, the data you collected (in tabular and graphical form), and the results you came up with from calculating your calibration. You would also discuss how your LDR would respond, quantitatively, to changing light conditions. (As it happens, most of you did this as part of your voltage divider homework already…)

  5. Discussion. You now have described your apparatus, the method and theory behind that apparatus, and now you can bring it together in discussing how everything came together. Specifically, you should be able to talk about the code that you had to write, how it worked, how well it worked, and what changes you might need to make to your solar tracker if this were to be used in a real deployment. That is, what about your model solution is good, and what might you need to rethink or reconsider for a real tracker?

  6. Conclusion. This is a (very) short summary of the work, restating key methods, theory, and outcomes.

A typical reader of this kind of report will read the conclusion first, then the introduction, and then (if it seems like a good report), the method/results and discussion. I offer that up so that you can think more clearly about what the conclusion and introduction should say. Note that what I describe above is not meant to limit you in terms of what you write; instead, it provides a structure and some recommendations as to what I think is essential.

Revision Opportunity

The final version is due before the exam slot on Thursday, December 11th. However, I would like to give you an opportunity to receive feedback before submission.