Design of a Wireless Heliostat System

The objective of this work is to design a wireless communicating heliostat system using microcontrollers and Zigbee communications protocol. The Arduino microcontrollers which are connected to the Zigbee modules (XBee) communicate wirelessly which eliminates the use of cables to transfer data between the heliostats and the central controller. This wireless feature is highly desired in full scale heliostat systems. The constructed prototype features four mirrors. Given the coordinates of the heliostat and the source of heat, a tracking algorithm is implemented to direct the heliostats towards the source of heat for optimum reflection of light beam into the tower. In addition, temperature sensors and photoresistors are installed in the tower to monitor the temperature and light intensity, respectively. Finally, a graphical user interface was developed to allow the user to control the operation and monitor the sensors reading.