Solarbrella

This device resulted from my NYU Tandon EG-1004 class's semester-long design project where we were tasked with creating a device for solving a specific problem. My group consisted of two other members one being another mechanic engineer and the other a computer engineer. I took a team lead type position and did lots of the communicating for the group with our professors and group mentor. I was also the head of design for the team making a large majority of the drawings and CAD for the project. The computer engineer was the head of programming and did lots of the wiring and coding for the project. Lastly, the other mechanical engineer did lots of the logistics for the presentations and also was the head of production which included presentation, appearance, and the construction of parts that were not directly tied to the design.

This was a mock industry project which required progress with three main milestones. For our first milestone, we had agreed on the first real design for the Solarbrella, had done preliminary research on similar products on the market, and researched materials that we would most likely need. This presentation also had cost predictions, and a teamwork agreement outlining our group's functionality and responsibilities. We had also decided on our company name being WitTech Junction and the product name being the Solarbrella. At this point, we were still in a very conceptual phase of the design process and were on budget and schedule.

By milestone two we had gone through two more additional iterations of the Solarbrella design. I had changes made to how the solar panel arrays would actuate to help optimize their rotation for the touch of our servo motors. There were also discussions on what items we would need to purchase for the device which included a solar controller for regulating the energy that would be used to charge the lead-acid battery, along with missions on what solar panels and batteries to buy. For this benchmark, we are still on a budget but were falling behind on the physical development of not only the device but the specialized sunshade that was needed for mounting the panels.

By milestone three we were back on schedule with a finished design for the Solarbrella (V6) and a constructed umbrella ready for the device to be mounted. budget was still met and we were within all of the project's specifications.

V6 had little changes from V5 but there were lots of changes over V1. The solar tracking system was now regulated by four photoresistors in a box formation separated by walls. The photo resistors would sense for light and if there was no light sensed then the device would either rotate or raise or lower the panels to be in direct sunlight. This would happen since the walls separating the photoresistors would cast a shadow on specific resistors unless the light source was directly perpendicular to the panels and resistors.

there were also improvements to the overall physical properties of the Solarbrella. Across the last three versions, there was a 34% weight reduction and the center of mass was now almost entirely in the center of the sunshade. this was hard to accomplish since there was a small space to work with and mounting different modules to different sides of the inner walls of the device would have a large impact on the center of mass. An imbalanced center of mass would result in the Solarbrella being unstable when rotating making the device potentially unsafe.

By the time commission day came around my team was five days early and ahead of schedule. We used this time to work on our final presentations and prepare for our formal final presentation of our semester-long design project and passed with extra credit. NYU EG 1004 professors like the Solarbrella so much that it was pulled from decommissioning and saved to be used in future EG 1004 classes as an example.