Hi,
As my solar in jar works very fine, I got some requests to explain my settings. So this is my personal help guide to those who aren’t getting it working…
First of all: my sensor in a Jar:
There are a few things that I played with to get it right:
- Put it at least 1.5m above the ground, otherwise the thermal mass of the ground will keep the sensor too warm when there come clouds for the sun.
- Leave it a bit open on the bottom. I create a fully closed Jar in the beginning, but because of that the jar wasn’t cooling down quick enough
- Use a small Jar, otherwise the thermal mass will keep it warm. It also warms up a lot quicker. Try to use thin glass.
- Try to put it in a location with maximum sunshine.
- Contrary to the last bullet: try to put it out of the wind, this will influence the temperatuur when the Jar is open on the bottom
Then I had to make a few settings in Weather Display. To find out what settings you need, you first have to observe what are the difference between the temperature and the sun-temperature during the day. Try 1.1 as a minimum (you don’t want 0,1 difference to create a 10% sunshine reading or something like that) and try the maximum difference at noon as a maximum. This of course depends on your siting and location on Mother Planet.
Explanation Solar1.PNG:
Solar sensor in use: select 1 if you use Channel 2
Select 1.1 and your personal observed max. (for me it’s 10.0)
Select 0 offset. (also when you have your own temperature sensor offsetted a few tens of degrees.
Untick: I have an adapted temphum sensor, this is for people who adapt their temphum sensor with a wired solar unit or something like that.
Tick: Override estimated solar from UV, because you want to estimate solar from your new temp-sensor
Explanation to Solar2.PNG:
There is not so much you really need to do on this page, but it makes your readings much better if you do.
Change the icon-settings to whatever you want. It starts counting sunshine hours above the Sunny-Icon setting.
Tick all the Icon options (you have to setup METAR for that as well).
Enable finetune times around sunrise/set because early morning and late evening the readings are not very good. It will change.
Untick: apply for sun hours as well, because in the case WD recognizes sunshine hours within the finetune times, it already will start counting and that is what you want.
Averaging: this one is important: change it back to 1 minute. Why? Because your sun-temperature-sensor will actually average it already because it needs approx. 10 minutes to warm up/cool down from. So you don’t need this anymore.
Explanation to Solar3.PNG
Calculate your personal max solar by your coordinates.
I also added a shadow offset in the morning. I actually don’t have an offset, but early morning it reacts slowly to sunshine. When I don’t use it, on a clear day it starts counting sunshine hours at 9 am (sunrise: 5.30). When I use 50% increase, it starts counting sunshine hours at 7.30 am which is much better.
After that, change some graph options if you want to display it.
That’s it, hope it will help!
Jan