Liquid Piston Tracker for Equitorial Mount Solar Panels

For cooking purposes, a solar collector needs only a medium amount of focusing, and not very great tracking precision. A hand-wound spring-powered "clock" drive (at 1/48 rph) should be reliable and inexpensive. This is the direction I would pursue.

I think you might be right. I never found any wind up clock drives here in Victoria but i did find this.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Portable_Sun_Tracking_Solar_Panel_With_A_Windup_Cl/

Where the guy manages to turn a solar panel with some sort of adapted wind up electric timer.

(I guess it was not windy there). A gust of the wind at my jobsite today would have made mush of the gears!

I just put this online so that other people might mess with it or maybe it could work in a school science fair?

Anyways, I had a lazy winter messing with this and other ideas and really have to make up for it by working a lot this summer.

Thanks for the comment

Brian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-bj0guW0k0 is a video of how it would work. It might be good that way for sterling engines too.

Brian