Solar collector wireless tracking system based on ZigBee

SHEN Zhuo-min， JIANG Zhou-shu， HUANG Guo-hui
（Institute of Automation， Hangzhou Dianzi University， Hangzhou 310018， China）

Abstract： In order to solve the problems of solar collector，such as low efficiency to absorb the heat energy，large hardness to wiring and inconvenience to manage，ZigBee wireless communications technology was applied to the solar collector tracking system. After researching heat absorption efficiency of solar collector，the relationship between the position of the sun and the local location was established，and then wireless control system of collector for tracking the position of the sun accurately was developed. In this system，MCU of STM32W108，which is a 32 bit microprocessor with Cortex_M3 architecture，was used to integrate the ZigBee wireless communication module in microprocessor，global position system（GPS） was used to obtain the local geographical location and the local time for calculating position of the sun，the upper computer software designed by C# was used to monitor and manage the wireless system. Test results indicate that the system can track the sun accurately and improve collecting heat efficiency obviously. It also has advantages of convenient networking，less wiring and high reliability of data transmission and so on.
Key words： solar collector； wireless tracking system； ZigBee； STM32W108； global position system（GPS）