Solar bike trailer with automatic sun tracking (version 1.0)

Convert your own bike: https://bit.ly/2PSOEyh
Why is my 100 watt solar panel only giving me 75 watts? https://bit.ly/2DGzauR


Here's how the solar trailer performs under challenging conditions. Instantaneous readings of solar, motor and pedal power are displayed across the top of the screen. This is about 2-3 hours before sunset on a hilly, twisty, tree-shaded road. I picked this route and time of day not because they're representative of typical touring conditions but because watching a rear view camera going in a straight line with no shading would be boring.

Huge thanks to Justin, Teklektic and everyone who worked on the solar firmware for the CA over at Grin Technologies. I've logged over 2000 miles (3000 km) with various solar setups over the years but I've always used two CA's and mostly had to make do with quick glances at the CA's while riding and jotting down totals at each stop. The combination of video and telemetry overlay is a game changer for solar bike design.

I hope this helps others who are looking to build their own solar rig.

I've uploaded the log data to the Grin Trip Analyzer here: http://www.ebikes.ca/tools/trip-analy...

Note: The Wh totals are a bit out of step with each other. The solar and motor Wh are from the start of the trip while the human Wh are from the start of the video (3 km into the trip). This is because the log contains Ah for solar and the motor controller but only instantaneous human watt readings. I power cycled the Analogger and CA at the start of the video to make it easier to sync the data with the video.

Tools used: CA3 with solar firmware, modified GPS Analogger with Hall sensor for solar charge current, Sempu Gen3 bottom bracket (uncalibrated), GoPro Hero 5 Session for video capture, DashWare for telemetry data screen overlay (running on a 12" MacBook under VMWare), Final Cut Pro to add the yellow markup and to edit the footage down to 5 minutes (from about 25).