If you make a large (1+ meter diameter) curved lump out of wet sand, you can use that to lay a fiberglass parabola which could then be chrome plated, painted, or otherwise finished on the inside of the parabola after it’s cured.
This would allow you to further concentrate the solar power beyond the current 48x limitation.
For the specific use case of cooking, I think the problem you will run into is that solar power is inconsistent which is problematic for cooking via direct heat as you tend to need consistent temperatures.
So instead I would look at indirect heat. By super-concentrating the full parabolic area into a single point, you can heat cooking stones which will radiate heat more consistently even when clouds momentarily block the sun.
Using a simple store-bought pizza stone suspended at a 45-degree angle above your food, the homemade solar "laser" (said in Dr. Evil's voice) could be targeted on the underside, directly above the food.
Placing firebrick or other insulating stone directly on the opposite side of the pizza stone would help ensure that minimal energy is lost through the rear.
They've got active/closed-loop control of the mirrors.
Right now, it looks like it's just using the camera feed to aim the reflected bright spot into the centre of the fiducial markers to align it with the oven window. If you wanted consistency temps, you could over provision enough mirror, then use a temp sensor in the oven to intentionally aim some of the bright spot outside the oven window - "wasting" that solar energy, but it was free anyway. (Maybe put a solar hot water system collector right next to the oven window, so any heat not needed for cooking could be used to make hot water for cleaning up after cooking?)
Yes, this is exactly how I planned to control the temperature : add a temperature sensor in the oven and implement a simple PID in the supervisor to do so.
Decades ago, my brother used the inside of a large umbrella covered in aluminum foil. A small grill attached to the handle was used to grill hotdogs. Not sure how he had it mounted in the correct orientation though. In this case, imperfect surface shape may have been a good thing.
Comments
If you make a large (1+ meter diameter) curved lump out of wet sand, you can use that to lay a fiberglass parabola which could then be chrome plated, painted, or otherwise finished on the inside of the parabola after it’s cured.
This would allow you to further concentrate the solar power beyond the current 48x limitation.
Good idea, thank you!
However a 20cm x 20cm square spot can be better for some applications.
If you want to cook something it's best to spread the heat over the entire baking sheet to ensure even cooking.
For the specific use case of cooking, I think the problem you will run into is that solar power is inconsistent which is problematic for cooking via direct heat as you tend to need consistent temperatures.
So instead I would look at indirect heat. By super-concentrating the full parabolic area into a single point, you can heat cooking stones which will radiate heat more consistently even when clouds momentarily block the sun.
Using a simple store-bought pizza stone suspended at a 45-degree angle above your food, the homemade solar "laser" (said in Dr. Evil's voice) could be targeted on the underside, directly above the food.
Placing firebrick or other insulating stone directly on the opposite side of the pizza stone would help ensure that minimal energy is lost through the rear.
They've got active/closed-loop control of the mirrors.
Right now, it looks like it's just using the camera feed to aim the reflected bright spot into the centre of the fiducial markers to align it with the oven window. If you wanted consistency temps, you could over provision enough mirror, then use a temp sensor in the oven to intentionally aim some of the bright spot outside the oven window - "wasting" that solar energy, but it was free anyway. (Maybe put a solar hot water system collector right next to the oven window, so any heat not needed for cooking could be used to make hot water for cleaning up after cooking?)
Yes, this is exactly how I planned to control the temperature : add a temperature sensor in the oven and implement a simple PID in the supervisor to do so.
Decades ago, my brother used the inside of a large umbrella covered in aluminum foil. A small grill attached to the handle was used to grill hotdogs. Not sure how he had it mounted in the correct orientation though. In this case, imperfect surface shape may have been a good thing.
Old school satellite dishes too.
Yes I've seen a solar dish warmer with a satellite dish (manually adjusted).
It was clever.