I am currently working on a project that will record the total amount of sunshine at my location
As I was working on my skycam and a idea came to me on how I could make a simple sunshine recorder
I’ll be using a hobby board 1 wire humidity module, the humidity chip will not be needed so I ordered one of these boards without it,
Could anybody help with the graph for the data , on my website I already have a graph that uses a script which records the position of the sun, I’m wondering if it’s possible to have the sunshine recorder data plot on this graph
All information on how to make this will be on my website as soon as I have finished testing
You might want to take a look at what these guys over on the Cumulus forum built. I’d imagine you could use some of the ideas to work with your design and tie it into WD. It started as a DIY project, and then grew into a pricey commercial device. They’ve come up with a nice graph to display potential daily sunshine (based on date and latitude), actual, and shaded. A link on the second link below for SR Around the World shows some examples.
Here is my sunshine graph for the first half of 2012. Horizontal axis is compass direction, vertical axis is elevation above the horizon. The intensity of sunlight is shown by colours. There are some data errors on the graph, visible as very bright sunlight at suspiciously low elevations, due to condensation in the sensor on some very wet days. The data is from a standard Hobby Boards solar sensor module.
Other data that is useful to plot in this format is UV Index and instrument temperature. Instrument temperature, especially when recorded as the difference between the instrument temperature in the sun and the shaded air temperature, is a useful proxy for sunlight, though there is a 30 minute time lag. It can also show clear sky at night, when the instrument is cooler than the air.
Is your theory that the glass ball will take a ray of light from any angle and redirect it to a vertical one? I don’t think it works that way, but I recently saw that there are many ads on ebay for inexpensive ($6) fish eye lenses on ebay like this one and I was tempted to buy one and try it for a sensor.
Beware of the sphere focusing the sun on something that is flammable, people are sometimes surprised when their crystal ball starts a fire. (Hmmm, shouldn’t they have seen that coming?)
It is some software that I wrote myself in VB.Net. I downloaded some functions that calculate the position of the sun for any date/time. Then I have it extract the solar data from my weather records and plot the results on the graph.
Today I connected a analog clock to the device, tomorrow should able to test this and see how much sunshine is recorded
I have some photos on my website, not take many photos with the analog clock as this is just in a test mode
I am hoping to put in a Digital Clock mounted in the housing , And an output to go into a one wire device, and a version could be used as a USB connection
I have just finished some tweaking to the sensor, it is outside recording today’s sunshine
when the sun is out, the clock starts to tick,
any clouds in front of the sun. will stop the clock,
at the end of the day I should have a total of today’s Sun at my location
the analog clock now has a sealed cover, the sensor and the clocks are now fully waterproof
this is a field version it’s not tied to any computer, the battery should last over 18 months
I’m hoping to start start making a second unit very soon which will connect to weather display
mick
I’m getting amazing results from the sunshine recorder
the analog clock is telling me how much sun. We are having during the day
. I need to solve another problem
I need to know when the sun started and stopped during the durations throughout the day
the analog clock is on a relay switch which is connected to the normally open circuit
soon as the sun hits the glass dome . The clock starts this gives me my total sunshine throughout the day
I am thinking of adding a second clock on the relay contact normally open ,
I may have to modify this so it somehow records the start and stop times against real-time
I appreciate any help or pointers to help solve this small problem
Have you ever seen an Instromet sunshine recorder? It is a very neat device and drives a clock when the sun is out. The main difference is that it contains a ring of photodiodes with a small post in the centre of them with the diode ring being horizontal (at latitudes other than equatorial).
When the sun is out the shadow of the post falls on at least one of the photodiodes. This is detected by the electronics as a difference in output when the sun is out, whereas when the sun is not out there is no shadow produced, the diodes all give the same output. So the clock like yours just registers when the sun is out. The clock counts in seconds and 0.01 hours corresponds to a count of 36 seconds so the unit has a resolution of 0.01 hours, ample for the job in hand. The unit can be purchased separately as a stand alone unit or it can be integrated into a computer interface which is the system I have.
The great thing is that it does not need any adjustment from summer to winter. At our latitude (56.5 deg N) in the middle of winter the maximum elevation of the sun is about 10 deg and it even works with that, down to elevations of about 1 degree.
hi John
, thank you for the info I have seen this instrument before
the device I have built does not need to be adjusted for the different seasons
the analog clock is recording the total sunshine for the day
. What I wanted to do is to add a second clock or counter with memory
that will show when the sun duration started and ended that particular time through the day
I have an idea of using a recorder felt nib on a analog clock with a customised clockface
the device is giving me some amazing results, . it will record to the nearest second
I set up instrument, so that the analogue clock is set to 12 o’clock and also the second finger is set to this as well
. As soon as the sun comes out , the analog clock starts tick
If there is any clouds going in front of the sun, the clock will stop, it will restart as soon as there is full sunlight
I am getting a total of sunshine for the day at the location of the instrument
the instrument is going to be moved to the location where there is no obstructions, buildings, trees etc
this is the next testing stage
I also wanted to record the start and stop times at each duration throughout the day with the field instrument
I am building a second one, which is exactly the same as the field version, except it will connect to my one wire weather station
this will give me the start and stop times duration throughout the day
, thank you for the information.
just been thinking about it. It doesn’t make any sense to alter the device
as it is doing exactly what it should be doing calculating the amount of sunshine during the day
Would there be any way to hook the clock up to a drum and pen like a barograph? The Y axis representing hours and possably have a solar panel hooked up to a motor driving the pen to somehow plot the intensity of the sun?
hi
thank you for your suggestion , this instrument will only record the amount of bright sunlight during the day
when there is full Sun we get an open circuit, if there is anything in front of the sun we get a closed circuit
. The other day we had some high altitude clouds. The sky was very pale whitish colour the sun was shining
sunshine recorder ignored this condition, it is set up to record full sunlight . Nothing in between
to record the brightness would require a separate project using the same hardware,
but using a different electronic sensor module,
this would make an excellent project for next year
I like the idea of a drum recorder,I have been playing around with some ideas, I want to make it so it would be battery operated small and mobile that could accommodate different types of projects, I have used drum recorders I have one on my kiln I use for testing ceramics, I have just started learning how to program picaxe chips , this should give me some more tools to develop more projects
I have started to put together a PDF file For the sunshine recorder, I put a rough draft on my website. It is not finished
At least it will give other people a chance to see how they could make one or even improve on it
I finished the project , Someone else is also making the same project and suggest to have a white outer casing on the tube
I’ve used a piece of White downspout piping .There are two rubber rings on the black tube To form a spacer, the white tube fits tightly over them ,I’ve added a solar panel to trickle charge the three Rechargeable AA batteries , This makes it totally self-contained
I’ve also added a datalogger to record sunshine duration and a digital time counter Which counts the Time in hours , minutes and seconds
The analogue clock version works perfectly, using the datalogger gives more data which can be Using a graph
