This work presents a solar tower power mockup with the aim of acting as a test-bed facility for evaluating new advanced control techniques. The mockup comprises low-cost hardware, open-source software together with 3D-printed structures for the elements in the system: a heliostat and a tower. The tower includes an open-hardware Arduino board, a Photovoltaic (PV) panel and a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) to measure and show the incident power. The heliostat includes a Raspberry Pi, a touchscreen display, and two servo motors. The main goal of this mockup is to serve as a first stage test-bed and demonstration facility for analyzing new developments with respect to advanced control techniques, for instance new heliostat tracking methods. This paper presents this mockup together with a new heliostat tracking method based on computer vision and deep learning that it is currently under development. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.