The thought of a tracking circuit had crossed my mind, especially since for a while now, even before starting this project, I've been tossing the idea around in my head and scribbling some notes for one, for a few of my small solar panels [2X80W] mounted on a old c band mount or Usals HH motor and controlled by a R-Pie A+ to track the sun. Virtually the same exact setup probably could be used for tracking on this and I have a few old C Band mounts here without dishes, a few unused HH Usals motors.
The hard part wouldn't be the actual tracking of the sun with the dish, I think, it'd be keeping the object to be heated in the focal point as the sun moves across the sky. Say, to heat water, mount something to the dish arm at the focal point and have flexible tubes running off of the thing for a supply of ethylene glycol connected to a heat exchanger, or a tube in a arc fixed throughout the focal point's arc throughout the day? I don't know for sure, yet, how to approach that. The sun is lower/higher different times of the year, so I'm thinking a Usals HH motor would be best to use and a reservoir on the dish arm with tubes running down through the LNB arm to swivel fittings then on to a heat exchanger. Also need to think on pressure release/safety valve of some sort, that type of stuff. Need to put more thought into it, once I finish up some of the seemingly hundred other projects that I have going on!
