easy diy aquaponics.com | Heliostat Whats a heliostat

easy diy aquaponics.com

I want to start building a heliostat, with the eventual goal of making a solar tracker, but for now, I really want to just build something that will send light through my window.

Why? You may well ask.

And "Whats a heliostat?" you may add.

A heliostat is the kind of thing someone with a water drop lensed microscope might have used to get some light on the subject*. Early models involved humans, who were forced to point shiny things in such a way as to reflect the light to shiny mens laboratories. Later versions incorporate wind up mechanisms. For a single day device, all thats required is that it turns 15 degrees every hour, as long as you are willing to manually adjust the elevation for the particular day you are using the device,
a heliostat will track the sun so that a mirror will always reflect to the place I want the light.

The solar tracker is like a heliostat, except that the place its pointing at is always moving. (that point being directly at the sun wherever it is. But the solar tracker is for another day. Actually all of this is for a great many days.

For now, Ill be working on a small digital device that controls the direction a small mirror is pointing, to make it always reflect light to a fixed point. Basically a way to bring some natural light through a window that doesnt see a lot of light.

There seems to be a few different ways to create some linear movement. Linear movement being required to lift a side of the mirror to adjust the direction of the reflection in the up and down aspect.. I figure if I can raise or lower one side, and make the entire device pivot around a mast, I should have all the degrees of movement required.

According to the invention engine, one way to create the required angle might be to glue a hinge to a mirror, and mount that to a mast to support it. Tie a string to one side of the mirror, then wrap it around a tiny winch mounted half way up the mast, then tie the other end to the other side of the mirror. That would give me up and down, and then all I need is a way to rotate the entire device, perhaps using a geared motor, and a pulley.

I havent really tackled this bit of the design, but the control of the motors could be done via a PICAXE chip similar to that used in my demand feeder. and some light dependant resistors (LDRs).

If two LDRs were arranged so that when the device was pointing correctly, they were both in full light, but when one became shaded, the motor could be turned in the correct direction to make the adjustment.

A similar arrangement could be made for both the up and down, and rotational movements.

Im off to an electronics store to buy some stuff.



*may not reflect reality.

120 Things in 20 years is busy finding bits of heliostat. 

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diy aquaponics cannabis | Photography Seeing whats inside a canon auto focus lens

diy aquaponics cannabis

Opening up my old camera in an attempt to fix a stuck lens didnt end well, but it did make me want to open other stuff.

A mouldy $5 canon EF 35-80mm zoom seems like a good candidate.

I actually made it work better than it did when I started.

Thats officially a successful repair.

We dont see many of those around here.

Odd feeling.

It turns out I wasnt being all that original when I used a lens cleaning cloth to make my macro lens hack light tight. It seems canon does something similar with a rubber band.

I attacked the rubber grip of the lens by lifting it up with a small flat head screwdriver, and sliding it up to reveal the three screws that control the zoom function.




Once that was done, the lens started falling apart. All it took was finding where the screws were in the first place. All the places I was told to start by the Internet were all false leads. Im guessing things like lenses are made by the lowest bidder at the time, so these things probably change design all the time.

The only real stumbling block was this very fragile looking plug.

Luckily I had uncounted them when I pulled apart my point and shoot canon digital, and discovered they werent really all that fragile.

I covered it with a folded bit of paper so the pliers wouldnt scratch the circuit off and pulled.




I also tried to avoid touching anything that looked like it might be copper. I have a feeling that touching stuff might lead to corrosion.

Probably just being paranoid, but it wasnt any really effort to avoid it. I should buy some cotton gloves for this kind of thing.

The little plug looks like this when its unplugged.

Robots are probably better at putting stuff like this back together, so I took a lot of photos as I was unbuilding it, so that I might have a chance of putting it back together.

Thats a tip.

Take lots of photos of things as you pull them apart.

One part that was really fragile was this little bit of kit.

Its like a switch that drags its contacts along a curved section of circuit board tracks so that the contacts keep in contact when you rotate the lens to zoom.

Or perhaps they adjust the aperture as you zoom, as Ive noticed the available aperture range changes from one extreme of zoom to the other.


Who knows what its really for, but I bent it convincingly out of shape when I was putting the thing back together.

I managed to fix it, but two of the pins will never be the same again.

This is the rear element. (the bit you can see a lens in on the left)

Its a cluster of ... three I think it was... lenses (two at least, but I think one was made of two), that I think also contains the aperture control.

The aperture control stuff must be in there, because there was nothing else with electronics in the lens.

I think this is me taking apart the lens that was really two lenses.

This things all had mould, but the other side of the one you can see in this pic had the most.

This is what I decided was the aperture bit.

I hope this isnt too technical for the reader.

Is bit even a word in this context...

Anyway, the remarkable thing is, after wiping down all the lenses with a lens cloth, it was actually an improvement.

Thats the before and after shots with this lens.

Most of the milkiness is gone, but there is still a bit of mould on the front bunch of lenses, but I think I might hack them off and convert this thing to a macro lens.



Ive been reading up on lenses, and how to hack bits off lenses that you dont want, and turn them into lenses that you do want.

Anyway, not a bad outcome for a $5, brand name, auto focus, zoom lens.

I cant wait to cut bits off it.




120 things in 20 years - Where you will still find someone who thinks a lens doing its auto focus thing is excitingly like having a robot. You also might find someone interested in photography trying to open a lens to see if there really is a man inside who does the focusing. (theres not by the way)














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