Sun Position Driver - Beta Testers Needed

[DanITman]

I wrote a sun positioning driver that I need help testing.

Driver allows you to trigger events in Control4 based on the suns location.  This is great for shades and allows you to mimic control like Lutron's Natural Light Optimization. Driver calculates the sun position based on your project location and timezone.  This driver does not require an outside API and all calculations are done on the driver itself.

Below are the variables that you can use for conditionals.  Driver fires an event on every calculation of the sun position.

Sun Interval: How often the sun position should be calculated. 

Azimuth: Direction of the sun as compass coordinates.

Altitude: Angle of the sun in degrees.  (Positive - Sun is above horizon | Negative - Sun is below horizon)

Season: Current Season based on Location

Trending: If the Sun is going UP or DOWN

Last Event: Day, Night, Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight, Astronomical Twilight, Solar Noon, Solar Midnight

If interested in testing, please DM me your email and I'll send you a beta trial. 

Thanks

[RAV]

Wow

[Neo1738]

I'll give it a test. Would love to start lowering my den shades or patio slider shade as the sun moves along. 

[Neo1738]

I've been giving this a test and it works amazingly. No more setting the shades to raise and lower based on timers in the morning and hoping it gets it right and having 2 sets of timers for summer and winter (sun rises slower in summer) etc. Now everything is based on azimuth of the sun (position east to west) and shades go up and down based on that. Love it!

[Time2Jet]

So far the driver has been flawless @DanITman  

I would think that for anyone with blinds it would be a must have.  I have some privacy programming against my tilts and shades, but now there’s this smart add-on for comfort and to save money on heating and cooling. 

[cnicholson]

Ditto.  I use the beta driver to control three groups of shades so far (many, many left to do).  Pretty flawless once you dial it in.  Because I am lazy, I do wish that the driver itself incorporated more "logic" around controlling shades and not just sun position.  That said, the core "where is the sun right now?" function is awesome, and the programming is pretty straight forward.  After some tips from the developer, I got an iPhone app that makes it easy to "survey" your windows (in terms of where, in terms of azimuth and altitude, the sun enters and exits the positions when it will be annoyingly shining directly through window) and then do the programing around these events.   Makes shade automation "set and forget" instead of my prior delta-from-sunrise/sunset approach that required seasonal tweaking.

I also pull weather forecast and solar radiation / brightness from the Tempest weather station driver and use as conditionals so shades don't close when it's cloudy or cold.  Works like a charm.

[jillmark99]

On 11/15/2023 at 1:38 PM, cnicholson said:

Ditto.  I use the beta driver to control three groups of shades so far (many, many left to do).  Pretty flawless once you dial it in.  Because I am lazy, I do wish that the driver itself incorporated more "logic" around controlling shades and not just sun position.  That said, the core "where is the sun right now?" function is awesome, and the programming is pretty straight forward.  After some tips from the developer, I got an iPhone app that makes it easy to "survey" your windows (in terms of where, in terms of azimuth and altitude, the sun enters and exits the positions when it will be annoyingly shining directly through window) and then do the programing around these events.   Makes shade automation "set and forget" instead of my prior delta-from-sunrise/sunset approach that required seasonal tweaking.

I also pull weather forecast and solar radiation / brightness from the Tempest weather station driver and use as conditionals so shades don't close when it's cloudy or cold.  Works like a charm.

Which iPhone app did you use to survey your windows?

[cnicholson]

9 hours ago, jillmark99 said:

Which iPhone app did you use to survey your windows?

I use "Theodolite," but looks like there are many other cheaper apps that do this.