Hi,
It looks like a few people have tried, and sometimes have found success, in making completely solar-powered drones. As someone with little drone making experience, how can I expect to replicate this and make a similarly fully-solar powered drone?
Replies
Ok, I did it
https://hackaday.io/project/166375-magic-flying-solar-carpet
Magic Flying Solar Carpet
Magic Flying Solar Carpet Project
is on on Hackaday
You are welcome to join our R&D team
Thank you.
You are free to email me at
manta103g@gmail.com
Hackaday is a nice place for the Magic Solar Panel Project
or Flying Solar Panel Project
or Magic Solar Carpet Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_carpet
supporting chat, multimedia and more nice features, attracting others to join in and support us.
https://hackaday.io/projects
What matters is to build or buy lightweight solar panels, flexible/ semi-flexible solar panels
Printed solar cells, printed solar tape feature very low efficiency at 1-4%
and are still overpriced today for any such venture but I keep in touch with 2 manufacturers from Europe
Hi Darius, will do. Do you have any other form of contact so we can keep in touch? I added you as a friend - please accept so I can message you my email address.
d j said:
not sure why my last reply doesn't seem to be visible
""Ok, you did it. I can build 3 all solar drones. Since it's not easy to get public funding and…"
keep trying to get it back in full
I can access my reply via the belowe web link
https://diydrones.com/xn/detail/705844:Comment:2950337?xg_source=ac...
but I am redirected to main thread only
So once again.
I can build 3 solar drones (micro scale, mini scale and full scale solar drone as a proof-of-concept)
There is a bug with Firefox web browser for MS windows, not opening web links in bottom of SG's page
Chrome works fine but I prefer Firefox.
It may take me some time to discuss and solve the problem with Mozilla
I am building Solar Drone r&d Team
you are free to join
Funding is a problem since I am limited to fund personally miccro and mini solar drones only.
Not sure about any public interest in solar drones.
Can you contact the professor from SG's university to get more technical details about the project ?
I dont think it is impossible.
An autonomous 100% solar-powered quadcopter was created in NUS. http://news.nus.edu.sg/press-releases/solar-powered-quadcopter It doesn't look very stable, but it is one example of hitting the sweet spot in terms of weight/flightworthiness
As you said in your first response there's no batteries so it can fly indefinitely during the day. Weighs 2.6kg and surface area 4 sqm, 148 solar cells and autonomously flies with a GPS system. (can fly for hours just off solar)
d j said:
I carefully followed the success mission of powered glider called Zephyr
And what you call "other people have achieved at least long flight times"
is $MM budget funded project
"
solar-powered robotic plane, dubbed Zephyr, soared above the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona from July 9 to July 23.
Built by British defense contractor QinetiQ, the drone’s 336 hour, 22 minute flight crushed the previous endurance record for a robotic plane, which was held by Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Global Hawk drone. That unmanned flight, which took place in March 2001, lasted 30 hours and 24 minutes.
To succeed, Zephyr required remote navigation to fly against jet streams to boost altitude for free.
To fly against jet streams you need an international team of weather forecasters, collecting live data on geolocation, wind speed.
Othewise your powered glider may ground prematurely as any other powered glider from the past.
In case of quadcopter, there is no room to install solar cells, so just give up such project as mission impossible.
What I have built for 100kg cargo drone challenge by Airbus, was powered paraglider and it makes sense to turn powered paraglider into autonomous or RC solar paraglider
qrun said:
yeah, but i realize quadcopters dont have the surface area and dont have lift to lessen the amt of power required
Andrew Murphy said:
Hi there, just to be clear are you saying you want to build a solar powered quadcopter because it is less complex than a solar powered fixed wing aircraft because it only has to hover? And you want the solar powered quadcopter to stay aloft for weeks?
It seems that other people have achieved at least long (not perpetual) flight times by using this model of recharging batteries with solar during the day. The drone also would have to fly at a relatively low latitude, and again unlike projects like this which are in constant motion the drone will only have to hover. I will keep researching, but I think it is possible to have the drone in the air for days if not weeks on end. but ill try calculating it
tethering seems like an interesting solution to combine with a solar powered charging station - it also seems like solar uavs in the past like atlantik solar (which ran purely off of solar because it was operated in the ice caps where the sun never sets) suffered from instability in adverse weather conditions & wind because of how light they needed to be (information i got after emailing the lab in charge of the drone), which tethering may also help? sorry, im extremely new to this and still in high school.
follow-up
the company developing Perovskite Thin Film printed PV cells, claiming 10-15% efficiency
is not ready yet to offer market product.
There is a chinese company selling semi-flexible solar cells, which can be lightweight to lower solar payload footprint
and just another company claiming having developed technology to cut crystal silicon ingot
to very thin slices, making them almost flexible.
Give me more time to get in touch
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