Solar Panel Dual Axis Tracking System (Increase 40% Power) with Tracker Controller, Complete Solar Tracker Kit, Ideal for Different Solar Panels, for Yard/Farm/Field

Intended Purpose: Used for site without available utilities. Intended to replace stationary solar panels to increase solar yield. Intended to remove need for a generator. Use to assist 12v Lead Acid battery bank for off grid use. To use with two 400w panels. Expectation(s): Based on price point I expected a medium quality product that would perform adequately. I expected a mildly difficult assembly and install. Expected medium quality components and parts. Initial opinion of product when received: Was pleasantly surprised with shipping speed. Cam in two boxes. Received within five days of placing order. Packaged extremely well. Minor damage to one of the packages but product was unscathed. Product construction was far better than expected. All fasteners were of stainless-steel quality. Fasteners were packaged individually for different milestones of install. Stainless-Steel Unistrut was great quality. Pedestal and moving parts were all powder coated and made of substantial steel heft. All parts were labeled clearly and easy to interpret. Instructions were clear and precise. Pros: Top tier materials used in construction. Product engineering is on point and is evident a lot of time was spent on design. Instructions are complete, clear and comprehensive Actuators are made of quality materials and are quiet when activated. All electrical components of high quality Control is high quality and easy to understand. Very easy to assemble with minimal tools needed. VERY efficient at capturing and increasing sunlight/solar harvest. Great price point Cons: Power supply was not included and had to be purchased separately. Alternative mounting options not available or offered. Final evaluation: I would highly recommend this product for anyone who is adding back up power or off grid power. I immediately noticed and 30-40% increase in efficiency vs my stationary panels. I was able to assemble this by myself in under two hours. Very impressed! Value scale (1=Low – 10=High): 10

Can't argue with what you get for the money. A tracking system for less than 1K is pretty good. I loaded mine with 8x old 50W panels. They crank all day long. My workshop is off-grid and the panels mounted on here are doing WAY better than the 8 you can see in the photo. The pad I mounted it to is 2x2 on the top and goes down 3 feet. Our dirt here is VERY hard and almost like compacted gravel so it's not going anywhere. The good: Easy to put together. Plenty sturdy for our winds with wind sensor. Included unistrut stuff is easy enough. Tracks very well, within its limits. More below. The bad: Stainless hardware requires you to either use anti-seize or watch your torque. It is easier than you would think to make the hardware unremovable. Tracks well but the southern extent of travel is a bit lacking. I am in New Mexico and I don't think it'll actually be able to pull down far enough to actually track 90 degrees to the sun for peak winter. The neutral: Would be nice if the control pad could easily be mounted the correct way. The manual says to keep the wires coming out the bottom and then you have to mount it turned 90 degrees. I am not too concerned about this as it doesn't rain here much but might be a problem in a wetter climate. Build looks a bit loose in the wind but it is holding up great and doing a good job so far. I've had this installed a month now and it is working well. Gets confused on cloudy days but quickly corrects itself when the sun comes back out. My next upgrade will have to be some newer, higher-efficiency panels for this thing. The 400W array is cranking out what it can for power so I'll need to find some of these infamous Chinese super cheap panels in the US to give me closer to 1000W on this backyard sunflower.

The basic unit has some issues that are easy to work around. The rail system is only suitable for light loads. If your looking to beef it up solid super strut or unitrack can be doubled back to back. Lows and Home D sell 10” long spans of this in 14 ga. You will need to use the biggest washers you can fit isn’t every place you can. After several mind bender mods I was able to cram 4-400W bi-facial panels on it. The oem drive rods will growl over this. You can pick up after market heavy duty right here on Amazon. Not too pricy for 600 pounders. They run slower but run quiet. This will also give you larger pins to manage the extra weight you will be adding. Program numbers will double as well. If you’re wondering if this thing will be worth the effort. The answer is a resounding yes. I’m still chasing all the bugs out of my mods but so far able to overcome all most all of them. The instructions for programming this thing are very basic and do not clearly define exactly what does what. I run KUKA robots for a living and trust me this thing is a hand full so far. I may pick up another one and re-engineer from the ground up. Many of the stress points need some help. All in all I’ve had a blast playing and planning this toy. It may very well pay for its self in the long run. If you stick to the basic unit it will do just fine. I see where they have made several upgrades already from the factory. I’m also seeing a lot of people stop by and ask about solar. When they see it working. Will update as things change. Sun trapping at its best. Update 4/1/24 Here in Oklahoma (Tornado Alley) we see straight winds over 80mph so every thing to beef this up is a must. So far this has lasted through some 40 mph gust in the flat and now tied down configured with bungee straps. All this is with the aid of weather apps and reports. We are expecting 50 mph+ today. I doubled the straps to 8 total. When knowing which way the wind is coming from is a plus. I’m going into manual settings and trimming the angles of the panels about 10 deg. Into the wind. Hoping to avoid some of the lift of the wind to flow over in a glancing blow. It is a must to kill the power to actuators after setting angles and tie downs. You may wonder about the bar clamps in some of the photos. They are a test of some fast disconnects of panels if need be. Fingers crossed for high winds in morning.

I had five stationary 100W panels powering my Chicken Coop (lights and fans), Gazebo (lights), and Pathway lighting. These are all located in a densely wooded area, so my stationary panels only received a couple of hours of sunlight a day, causing my two 100AH batteries to often dip below 11.5V. I decided to try this tracker, knowing it might struggle to track the sun given all the shade. I'm no solar scientist, and I've only had it in place for a month, but so far, there is a definitive increase in my solar collection. I've observed it tracking quite well, even with the many pockets of shade. Overall, I've been pleasantly surprised and am giving it 5 stars despite my minor criticisms below and the short amount of time it's been in use. Out of the box, it seemed sturdy and well-made. Everything fit together perfectly, and the assembly instructions were good. I painted the parts prior to assembly to blend in better with the surroundings. I customized the controller mounting as it didn't seem very well protected from the elements, and the vertical mounting seemed odd. I also fabricated a different mount for the sun sensor. The original mount and placement are likely fine for most, but because of my shade issues, I'm experimenting to find the best placement (and controller settings) to avoid having the unit struggle to find the sun. I purchased the Eco-Worthy combiner box separately, mostly for surge protection and to help with the cabling, but in retrospect I probably could have done without it. I do wish there was some sort of channeling or hardware guides for all the cables. At a minimum, some guidance on best practice cable routing and leeway for movement would have been helpful. For me, the biggest struggle was with the controller settings, which are critical but cryptic and poorly explained in the provided instruction guide. Luckily, there are some great customer YouTube videos to help with that, because there's a 100% chance that most, if not all, of these settings will need to be adjusted from their defaults to meet your specific setup/location. I ended up putting my interpretation of the settings in google sheets (pictured) just so I could track my tweaks and hopefully fine tune things for optimal performance.

Works as described, compatible with other solar panel brands. Appearance is ok. Instillation instructions could have been better. But there are several YouTube videos that helped. It wasn't clear that the 12 volt battery was not included.

01/18/2024 review update: Now that a new year is here, the tracker and wind speed indicator have had time to work. I will start with the controller that is connected to the main post is water proof, and as seen from the picture supplied is attached different from directions. True the directions do not show the unit (tracker controller) is already prewired, with the exception of the wind indicator. My controller was not programmer by me until much later, and it was found that it used the default programs to track the sun. The newest "solar tracking controller" being prewired is nice to know that the case does not need to be opened which makes it easy to connect the activators N,S and E,W. If I want to turn the unit off a simple on/off switch was installed from the unit battery. Testing the “wind speed sensor” did not send the tracker to rest position with light wind of 20 mph. more later... 10/25/2024 review update: Here we are getting to the end of the hurricane season in Florida. Hopefully the last hurricane (Milton) witched moved across central Florida from the gulf and had land fall as a cat 3 hurricane. Here in the Tampa bay area we had some high winds, The base were the 8 hold down bolts had no damage nothing bent, but need to reset it back on the platform. The control unit is still water tight, and the solar panels came through fine, withe the exception of one that hit the ground and cracked. The whole base unit is solidly built and weathered the storm nicely. the activators were pulled lose and some of the rails that the panels were connected to were bent. After adverse conditions the tracking system showed it was NOT cheap constructed and solid. Have been following this solar tracker for some time on Amazon and finally bought one on prime-day. Included is a picture of the solar tracker (completed). I could see right away after receiving it that the tracker runs independent of the solar panels. One simple reason, it runs on its own battery. A lithium deep cycle 6-amp battery is a good step in the right direction to test the activators for N, S, E, W,. during and after completion of tracker. I took my time building the tracker and a few weeks later when almost completed the controller screen went blank; my first thought was there was something wrong with controller, but what I did was put the battery on (smart diehard) charger for 5 minutes and got my screen back. I realize this review is for the tracker only, but what about solar power, do we just hook up solar to the power box and use less electricity? There is something called off-grid and on-grid. I can hook my toaster to my 2 kilo-watt battery with (inverter built in for AC as part of unit) for a minute or two and not see much reduction in battery power percentage drop, this would be off-grid power would it not? Then the sun through the solar panels on the tracker, keeps the battery charged. A good place to start a review is with the base – in this case the platform and main pole. The platform has four 2 ft 4x4s with 24” ground anchors which makes the platform very sturdy. The main pole has been improved at the base with 8 expansion bolts and now 8 panels 90-degree welded panels, to support the pole and base that the bolts connect. The written directions were very clear up to and through the connection of the long and short activators. When testing directions N, S, E, W, the west button was pushed, and the direction of the tracker moved East. The D-Rod needed to be repositioned, that is, connected to the long activator. Doing so, this switched the direction, so now west goes in west direction. Also of interest, there are some very good videos on the Amazon “ECO-WORTHY Solar Panel Dual Axis Tracking System” listing, that have recently been added. So it seems the company has made some good improvements in both documentation and equipment. To list one document improvement an online video has troubleshooting of controller programs as well!! The design of the tracker is quite good: with connecting the channel steel to the E-rod with 6 bolts for stability. But there is one problem: the “center solar panel“ middle clamps are stopped by the E-Rod for a secure hold down (bolts to long), A fix could be using a handful of extra washers. Summary: The main pole being connected to the wood platform is very stable. If the wood platform can stand high winds, the metal base and pole connected should be equally secure. The power for the tracker has a max amp output of 15 amps, I added a second 12volt 6amp battery in parallel connection for a total of 12 amps for backup of the second activator. I was thinking about hooking up a car battery just to test electronics; good thing I did not; that would have burnt out most of the electronics. With the improvements and added online documentation the 2023 solar tracker is coming into focus. I highly recommend this product! (Note: this tracker was installed in central Florida where high winds are the norm during the season).

Gotta look at the recommended panel sizes before you order, and go ahead and order their battery module for these as well. Just experienced sustained 30MPH winds with gusts into the 50s and these mounts held up great. They also have a great powdercoat finish and quality hardware. I was so happy with the first two I ordered, I went ahead and picked up a third.

I ordered 3 of these and in general they have been good systems. However, one of them went bad about 10 months after install. It stopped tracking to the east. I reported the issue to the company during the warranty period. They asked for a video of the problem which I also provided during the warranty period. Then they asked for another video of the same thing and a photo of the back of the controller (there is nothing on the back). By the time I was able to get this and respond, I was out of the warranty and they said that I would now have to pay for the new controller. I think they were just stalling because I was close to the end of the warranty, but this is not how warranties work anyway. The issue was reported during the warranty, and should then be honored from the report date. I consider this shady and corrupt and would not do business with such a company again.