SolarSpy

TL;DR

We built a monitoring system for a Solar Panel and reported data such as average voltage over time via SMS back to the user.

All of the code for the project can be found in my GitHub repo here.

What Is It?

The project collects data from a solar panel using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and processes that data to get readings such as average voltage and UV index. That data is then sent via SMS to a phone number for easy monitoring. This could be extrapolated to use over many solar panels to collect readings and get easy updates from the state of the solar farm.

Why Was it Made?

Solay Spy was created for the first inagural Electrical Engineering Competition at the University of Alberta! The competition gave teams 10 hours and few constraints to make something fantastic to present to a panel of industry judges. Once our team saw a solar panel there, we immediately thought that this could be something interesting and built a project around it!🌞

Future Improvements Include:

• Send a message to the pico to prompt for data instead of receiving it at scheduled intervals
• Inclusion of an LCD display in the event that SMS is not available
• Increased accuracy in reading as well as more readings to take