Crumpled

Almost a case of wastebasketball for today's scribble. I decided to allow myself a day of boys own electronics fiddling. Baby steps throughout the day towards linking up several units in the solar panel rotating mechanism that had been on the shelf for a while. Today's challenge started out with getting five volts out of twelve to feed to my amplified sensor array, that was then combined with some limit switches to shut off the feed to the motor when the panel reaches its limit of travel at east and west. Holding up the array to a lamp here to light little indicator leds and get the motor running, then clicking the switch to make sure that the motor stops promptly. The last piece in the puzzle is a device to return the panel to the eastern limit after night has fallen, something like a photosensor light switch i guess. The last attempt at all this was using a microprocessor, but this time I am trying to keep it analogue. The H bridge on my last attempt was not strong enough for the job and the technique of wiring it up left it prone to burnouts. This time I think I have oversized everything sufficiently and it should last a while.
Lots of mistakes and failures along the way, but soon I should be ready to pop the circuits in the box and probably get annoyed by the occasional blurt of movement from the panel when it eventually starts to follow the sun.
A day of solid rain that was good for little other than this kind of desk work.