farfromfearless
Solar powered mini car
Somehow I was reminded of an old project of mine. After a little search in my archive I found all the information of the project, which I never published on the internet yet. So now is the time. 
In the summer of 2003 I build this solar powered mini car with a friend as a school project:
Specifications
Weight: 200 grams
Length: 260 mm
Width: 120 mm
Average speed: 0,051 m/s (0.18 km/h)
Parts used
-Body made of balsa wood
-A few Meccano pieces
-Wheels
Two rear wheels
One front wheel
-Solar panels, 4 pieces:
Net voltage 0,55 – 0,6 V
Short-circuit current 650 mA
Size. (lxb) 50 x 50mm.
-Motor, designed for solar panels:
Net voltage 0,4 V/10 mA
Size. (Æxh) 35,4 x 26 mm · Axis-Æ 2 mm
Suitable for use with solar panels with a return of more than 10 mA.
-Crocodile clips, 4 pieces
-Wires, lot’s of wires
-(Hot) glue
-A rubber band
Building the car
We started with (hot)glueing the body of balsa wood together.
The solar panels are put on a bigger panel and are connected in parallel. The solar panels are connected with crocodile clips and will be wired to the engine. As you can see in the pictures, I broke one of the panels. Oops.. They are very fragile… Though, the most interesting was that it still worked.
We demolished some old toys and as a result we had a nice set of wheels. For the rear we used a nice pair of wheels which already were connected with an axis. The front wheel came from some other toy. With the help of some Meccano elements the wheels were mounted to the body.
The motor is placed in a special engine compartment. We used a rubber band to transmit the power from the engine to the wheels.
Testing the car
In the begin of the progress we tested the motor and the solar panels under a halogen light. Later on, in an outside test the cars’ average speed was 0,051 m/s (0.18 km/h). The tests can be viewed in the video at the bottom of this post.
Video
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