UPDATED Self Rotating Solar Panel

UPDATED design to remedy Solar Panels getting sunlight from behind Armor Blocks.
Increasing the weight of the spinning disk increases the rotation speed of the station
but overspeeding makes it harder to brake and can cause non-stop rotation

I made a Rotating Solar Panel made from Vanilla objects.
Rotor Solar Panels rotate just enough for the Main Solar Panels to be facing the sun.

no Scripting
no Programming Blocks
no Gyroscopes
no Antenna

will probably have limitations on weight but so far the rotor can carry it all. weird.

OLD design

 

how do you see it being used? how will you export the power to where it is needed? test it with very many more batteries, it could then be left in space to re charge and periodically sucked dry by docking ships.

 

I Had a salvage station perched on a comet a while ago, and noticed the sun orbit was aligned with the station (sun just circled and was always in view). "Neat!" I thought to myself, and started to better line up the station on the suns axis, and got ready to do some maths.

Or tried to. I perched the station on an advanced rotor (strong enough to move entire station), and wanted it to do 1 revolution every 2 hours, to match the "day", and in this way keep the sun in the station seats' crosshairs, blasting its solar panels constantly, simply with no scripts or code.. Just set the rotor to do 1 spin every 2 hours.

Thing is, I hate math, and Google voice to text failed me on this one. I wanted to know how many rpm = 2 hours for 1

oof. 360 degrees in 120 minutes.. 1 rotation per 2 hours. This should be simple.... arent degrees of a compass measured in arc seconds/minutes- but where can I find me an olde timey sailor in 2020?

well, one is 1/3 of the other, so set rotor to rpm of .33? nope too fast. Of course it wasnt that simple... but they're both in minutes: Rotations per Minute and 120 minutes. ??!!

Fine, maybe I'm just looking at the numbers wrong. Then whats 1 divided by 120? .008333.... Lets try it, and stare at the sun a bit. Bingo! (So happy! I did a MATH!)

Rotor set to .008 and station tracks the sun... roughly (that .0003 dropped fraction adds up over time)

It makes my comet asteroid station a bit more interesting, as Im working on ships or harvesting ice, every time I return to station for air or something its always pointed a different direction, but isnt really visibly moving.

I suppose in space, once you figure out the sun's path, you could simply override the gyros of the solar panel battery grid set to .008 Rpms as well. (probably need a mod to get down to .0083333 precise)

Youre OP design is really clever, but mayyybe a bit over-complicated. I really do appreciate the "inertia kicker" design... That had to be difficult to figure out. Sorry to deflate any effort.. but you could probably convert kicker disk to a station and simply set rotor to .008 rpm

 

This is what i did too. after researching from the veteran players and youtube. i encountered an issue with this they mentioned something about timing in game is different ? i forgot what it was. but basically every after loading my world the sun is in a different location and my rotor is now out of sync from the sun leaving me to tinker with the angle every time. i found several videos of aligning the panels using gyroscopes etc but too much for me. so i made this one which is using blocks to cover the sensor solar panel to manipulate when it will rotate the rotor. so now regardless of where the sun is as long as it is in the same horizon as your panel the rotor will keep spinning until your main panels are facing directly the sun. the weird thing is though, when the sun goes behind the earth like planet, the sensor solar panel is still getting powered like as if earth is not there to cover the sun.

its not based on inertia. the rotor stops immediately after losing power. starts again after getting sunlight.

its not really that complicated. there are no parts in here that requires too much tinkering like setting gyros to 0.008333 or rotor to 0.008333.. the only complicated part in the system is the rotor but all you have to do is set torque, brake torque, and velocity to max. thats it ! no need to worry about 0.008333 which after a few gameplay will desync from the sun. this setup is simple.

basically ;

1. Sunlight hits the Sensor Solar Panel ( 1 panel ) and powers the Rotor
2. Rotor moves as long as it has power, moving the Sensor Panel away from sunlight
3. Sensor Panel loses sunlight therefore losing power stops the rotor immediately
4. the rotor stopped right where the Main Solar Panel ( 16 panels ) is facing the sun
5. as the sun keeps moving catching up with the Sensor Solar Panel ( the cycle continues )

even if lets say, you move the sun around, this will still work regardless of the sun's position. with other methods like timing the sun's rotation with your rotor's velocity, its not accurate i tried it. it works for a while then later your panels are facing 90 degrees from the sun. in my case the day lasts for 2 hours real time, i saw that the rotor should be set to something like 0.0083333333 something (if i remember correctly) but then the settings only allow up to 0.00833 something. also they said something about the game engine ticks will make it difficult for me to sync with the sun. those are my troubles with playing with rotor velocity.

--- Automerge ---

i actually upgraded the Main Solar Panels and the Sensor Solar Panel is still able to spin the entire station. i have medbay o2h2 gen lockers tables oxygen system etc.. its a fully working station and it still spins facing the sun and stopping. the main station is powered as usual, the Rotor section is not connected to the main station and will only be powered once the single sensor solar panel gets sunlight. stops afterwards. and goes on each time, almost every 10 second accurately facing the sun without using scripts.

 

Yes, I like your "photovore" setup idea. At first I thought you had a script that sensed the solar panels' output to tell the motor what to do. and watching your OP video the base seemed to rotate opposite of the solar panels, like it was loose, and its momentum was what shifted the solar panel part... maybe was just an optical illusion. But ok, wow you made a neat sundial shadow driven pointer.

Now, to explain why its better than gyro or rotor rotation now: grid loading.
If you leave the render range of the grid, it ceases to exist, until such time that you get near it again- then its reloaded. This is why you come back and its never pointing right anymore.

So your system is better! It gets re rendered, and simply drives until it shadows itself.

 

does that mean if i leave my station on earth and build a station in space my earth station will not recharge ? i was hoping my station functions the same when i leave them with power.

 

@Capt.SkuLL Yes, it absolutely will recharge. I suspect Calaban is used to a Torch-based server (which is not vanilla) - which has something they call "concealment". The vanilla game doesn't have such a thing.

This is a good thing - and it's a bad thing. It does mean that every construct everywhere will affect performance always. For servers, that's not good.

 

You could also use Isy's Solar script . It should be light enough for server use.

 

thanks. Well i cant join MP servers for some reason anyway. im stuck with Single player.

thanks. but my goal was to try it without scripting.

 

That's a clever idea, I like it. I suspect you need to align it to the sun rotation reasonably accurately.

Also since it was mentioned I have found that my rotor seems to ever so slowly get out of alignment. I was thinking it was the game not calculating the day length or rotor speed correctly or it was rounding my rotor speed significantly which threw off how synced it was. But yeah maybe it's because the sun moves a little on save/reloads.

Anyways I quite like the system you have here. Obviously nothing is perfect but your system will align and not have to worry about whether the sun moves around or if the game rounds of calculates things incorrectly.

The only question I have now is how large can you make a station before it stops rotating(assuming things get rounded) or the rotor requires such a large mass attached to it that it can no longer spin properly. Anyways I think if I play again I will take this approach and see how it goes.

 

Advanced rotors are far stronger than regular motors, FYI

My rotor spinning salvage station weights around 6 million kg by now, still spins just fine

 

i noticed it too. sometimes i think i am aligned parallel to the sun's horizontal movement then later realizing the sun is moving ever slightly downward. but the sensor panel will still get hit though and the main panels get 4 green bars still. however, i would really like a mod that will draw me a horizontal line guide to where the sun is moving. currently i just play with Admin controls to move the sun and see if im aligned with that.

i think that the rotor's torque should be able to spin a large station in space as intended, however i question the Power side of the equation. im no expert but a single solar panel like that can power that much torque from an advance rotor ?
Also i noticed the spin slows down the bigger your station is, and so i had to play around with velocity as the station grows ( with torque and brake torque maxed ) .. now im in maxed and it still spins, im thinking about adding a second rotor rotated by the first rotor given that power does not seem to be the problem.

 

If in single player world you can "admin cheat" to determine sun path... alt-F10, day offset slider, will slide the sun around its path.


Or if you want to stick 100% legit, youve already made a sun dial thing, so you could add a simple "sun pointer" to see over time your alignment is off- a simple stack of pillars on your facing the sun part, set to point straight at the sun. Watch where the shadow goes high or low.

Or make a full on solar observatory: flat platform ship, tall stack of pillars to throw a shadow. place other single pillar markers even distance apart from pillar, side by side, separated by a few blocks.

Watch the shadow at the far end, should now be visibly moving. Tilt tilt tilt until you get the right motion to have the shadow pass each marker evenly without going high or low.

Presto- your own little space Stonehenge.

 

Thanks. why did i not think of that. i can use the F10 slider to see the sun path and compare it with a line of blocks.

Anyway, i have been getting into trouble with the Solar Panels. they are getting sunlight somehow despite being closed on all sides with armor blocks. it seems it is a bug since the 2018s and some player said i need to cover it with 2 blocks.

- after doing some testing i found out that on each SIDE of the solar panel that touches an armor block it requires 2 blocks. the side that does not come into contact with armor blocks can be covered with one block.

- ALSO found out that doubling the ROTORs does not improve the rotation speed at all when attached to a station or large ship weighing 300k or more.
increasing the weight of the spinning disk solves the issue. increases the speed at which the station rotates.