Our Hackaday Prize Challenges are evaluated by a panel of judges who examine every entry to see how they fare against judging criteria. With prize money at stake, it makes sense we want to make sure it is done right. But we also have our Hackaday Prize achievements, with less at stake leading to a more free-wheeling way to recognize projects that catch our eye. Most of the achievements center around fun topics that aren’t related to any particular challenge, but it’s a little different for the Infinite Improbability achievement. This achievement was unlocked by any project that impressed with their quest for power, leading to some overlap with the just-concluded Power Harvesting Challenge. In fact, when the twenty Power Harvesting winners were announced, we saw that fourteen of them had already unlocked the achievement.
Each of the Power Harvesting winners will get their own spotlight story. And since many of them have unlocked this achievement, now is the perfect time to take a quick tour through a few of the other entries that have also unlocked the Infinite Improbability achievement.
Solar Electric Power
Photovoltaic solar power is the fastest growing energy source worldwide. And since the technology easily scales from gigawatt power stations all the way down to little waving cats, it’s no surprise we saw a lot of experiments with solar power. Almost half of the Power Harvesting Challenge semifinalists either incorporate solar cells directly or help make the most out of their power. And if that’s not enough solar inventiveness for you, there are even more solar explorers who have unlocked the achievement.
Like [Aidan Ruff], who lives on an olive farm far off the electrical grid. He’s in the middle of building a solar tracker to get more power from his 60-panel solar array. The system calculates optimal angle using GPS for time, latitude, and longitude, and a small weather station watches for high winds so it can tell the array to lay flat in self-protection. This is a project with immediately measurable returns because any increase in solar power generation will directly reduce the need to run a fossil-fuel burning generator.
If just changing angles on solar panels aren’t interesting enough, how about solar panels on the move? The Sun Chaser is a sun-seeking robot that carries a solar panel on its back. It could harvest solar power in places where a static array would be shaded for part of the day. Mobility allows the robot to chase beams of sunlight, elbowing aside cats looking for a warm place to nap. The project comment section immediately asked whether the increase in power generation would offset the power consumed by the mobile chassis. We expect there’ll be a crossover point where, if the panels were shaded for more than some percentage of the day, it would make sense to move the panel. We look forward to creator [Dennis] finishing the build and find out!
Thermal Electric Power
As a civilization, we are adept at …read more
Source:: Hackaday