Anybody have a good way to sense sunlight?

[sharrisct25]

So I control my pool with HS. Most of it works great and all the intelligence is driven by time and sensors that are reliable. The problem is the control of my solar heater. They work great if the sun is shining but if you turn them on when it is cloudy it actually cools the water.

I have tried a number of options to determine if they should be on or not. I have used light sensors inside the house, weather conditions from a plug in and just temperature all in different combinations and alone. None of them really work fully. Fact is there can be a hot day with very little sun. There can be lots of sun at the house but the weather forecast conditions are overcast.

Now a light sensor would probably be best but I can't find one that can be mounted outdoor and works with my EZIO. Another good option would be to somehow detect the voltage from my SolarCity system or perhaps hook a small solar panel and sense voltage from that.

Anyway does anybody out there have something like this working reliably. Any suggestions?

[concordseer]

An Arduino project might be your best way forward. Cheapest and most adaptable way to integrate a solution into Homeseer. A lot of examples available too. Have a look at this one https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub...arduino-2a0e9d

[mrhappy]

So I control my pool with HS. Most of it works great and all the intelligence is driven by time and sensors that are reliable. The problem is the control of my solar heater. They work great if the sun is shining but if you turn them on when it is cloudy it actually cools the water.

I have tried a number of options to determine if they should be on or not. I have used light sensors inside the house, weather conditions from a plug in and just temperature all in different combinations and alone. None of them really work fully. Fact is there can be a hot day with very little sun. There can be lots of sun at the house but the weather forecast conditions are overcast.

Now a light sensor would probably be best but I can't find one that can be mounted outdoor and works with my EZIO. Another good option would be to somehow detect the voltage from my SolarCity system or perhaps hook a small solar panel and sense voltage from that.

Anyway does anybody out there have something like this working reliably. Any suggestions?

I've looked at the EZIO and it appears that it has two analogue inputs (?), if so then an LDR (say an ORP12 - you can probably encapsulate it quite well rather than a CDS type sensor), something like a 500K resistor connected in a potential divider circuit between the 5V pin, the input and ground will give you some ability to sense light and dark.

I've just done some ballpark calculations and in darkness you would get 1.6V and in bright light the full 5V. It would probably work if all you needed to know was light/dark, it should provide enough swing on the values.

Ebay is also littered with photo sensors but most seem to want power from 12V - those could possibly work fine if you had one with a relay contact it is just you would have to power it separately - things like this - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-12V-Aut...oAAOSwax5YvOBs

If however you wanted to know lux levels then there are many many sensors available for things like the Arduino, the only issue I found is how to actually put those sensors outdoors. I had one of the UV index sensors but I could never figure out a good way to mount it outdoors in the end.

[cowinger]

Now a light sensor would probably be best but I can't find one that can be mounted outdoor and works with my EZIO. Another good option would be to somehow detect the voltage from my SolarCity system or perhaps hook a small solar panel and sense voltage from that.

Anyway does anybody out there have something like this working reliably. Any suggestions?

Here are a couple of adjustable light sensors that may work.

https://www.amazon.com/CSLU-Tool-Adj...%2Bsensor&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/Sensky-Photor...HQ32K546D44NPT

[peterpc]

http://shop.vair-monitor.com/index.p...product_id=135
Works perfect with Homeseer.

[Pete]

You want to keep it simple and the vThings - Wi-Fi LUX Meter above is a nice and easy way to do this.

Here relating to irrigation best numbers were local relating UV and ET calculations.

In the 1980's just utilized a small electric pump for the roof mounted solar water panels.

It was a very manual effort and it worked fine for the pool and the hot water tank during sunny days. There was a supplemental propane heater for the pool for nightime but it was rarely utilized.

With the 1-wire stuff it was just putting a 1-wire temperature sensor in a sealed jar and using the difference in ambient temperature versus jar temperature to get a UV number or a light sensor on the HB triple function 1-wire boards.

[sharrisct25]

Thanks everybody!

Lots of options I had not found myself. Thank you all so much!

[randy]

The best device I have for actual solar output is my Ambient weather station, which reports solar and UV radiation. It is a much better representation of solar energy than a simple luminance detector. The data is being uploaded to WU as can be seen here.



Unfortunately neither of my plug-ins offer solar radiation from the PWS as a HS device, though the data might be in the XML file that WeatherXML or UltraweatherWU3 use.

[epimetheus]

I'm using a WirelessTag from CAO Gadgets. It measures lux along with humidity and temperature. Yesterday was partly cloudy in the morning and thunderstorms at lunch, then overcast for the rest of the day. My sensor is on a window ledge on our front porch.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Pete]

Cumulus reads these values from weather stations and there is a Homeseer Plugin for Cumulus and WeatherXML will read the cumulus data text file. (well I do). Cumulus is free (with a suggested donation).

Originally did not want to mention the weather station route as it is a bit more money than a single instrument.

Switching over here to using both Davis console (serial connection) and the Meteostick which will connect to the Davis and other wireless weather instruments.