To make sure that I am on the right track before spending a ton of money on flexible solar cells. I am making a prototype of one out of the many branches that will make up the tree itself. The current branch that I am making is made up of 5.5V, 22mA flexible solar cells. I made pairs wired in series and then wired all the pairs into a parallel circuit. The output of this solar cell circuit at full sunlight should be 11V, 132mA which is 1.452W. I then attached this circuit to a branch that I found in Washington square park. Eventually I hope to make the actual tree and branches out of plastics or metals.
In the image below I have the solar branch prototype and a sound device(Voicepad) . The sound device will be used to make ambient sound every time a person walks close to the tree.
This is a close up of the sound device.
To control the device, I am thinking about using an Arduino and an Infrared sensor.
