During this initial prototyping phase I took a closer look at the materials involved, the energy consumption/saving of the device itself and how the materials should fit inside a housing. I created a small cardboard mock-up based off the physical dimensions of the components needed and found that almost everything minus the pivoting gimbal should fit roughly inside of a soda can. The purpose of doing this was to visualize the ratio of packing weight to energy saving in order to better understand if people would want to carry this with them in the field or camping. Ultimately, it feels as though the resulting product is still too large for the minuscule amount of energy the device could improve on when harvesting solar power.
Additionally, I found an open source gimbal to handle the full range of motion needed for the tray was to planning to 3D print a demo to see how pieces could fit together, but before I began the lengthy print process I wanted to take a step back and look at the overall design again to figure out whether or not to move forward with the idea.
