Using Azimuth and Elevation + window direction to automate blinds

[msgreenf]

Can anyone explain how this works?

 

[DanITman]

On 7/6/2024 at 7:46 AM, msgreenf said:

Can anyone explain how this works?

 

Here is how I use my own sun position driver that I wrote. 

1.) Divide your house into sides of the house where you have common shades that you want to change in sunlight.  Example: FrontHouse.  
2.) Create boolean variables for all the sides of the houses you want to create. 
3.) Create macros for the sides of the house and the shade position that you want those shades to move to when the sun is in range. I have wood blinds so this is easy to do.  If you have shades and you want them to "follow" the sun, this is a lot harder and I wouldn't recommend this route. 
4.) Create programming for the macros above that move the shades to the correct position when sun is in range. 
5.) Now its time to determine the range of sun for the shade.  I recommend an app like Sun Seeker to help you determine the min and max azmuith and elevation for that side of the house. 
6.) Take your values from above and lets create programming that looks for the sun position changes.  This is where all the tricky program will exists.  You'll want to setup conditional statements that check for the ranges for each side of your house.  When the condition is true for Azimuth and Elevation you will want to set the variable to true for that side of the house.  Make sure you have an else statement that sets the variable back to false once the condition is no longer true.  This will allow you to trigger a shad position once the sun moves out of range. 
7.) Now we create the programming that watches the variables for each side of the house.  Once those variable changes to true you will want to move the shades via the macro you built earlier.

This should be a good method for tracking shades and making actions.

[msgreenf]

@DanITman can you provide a link to sunseeker?

[msgreenf]

So I think I am close - I have this set now

 

But I am not using Elevation yet...just Azimuth...how do I use Elevation?

[DanITman]

4 hours ago, msgreenf said:

@DanITman can you provide a link to sunseeker?

Sure, here you go:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sun-seeker-tracker-surveyor/id330247123

[DanITman]

3 hours ago, msgreenf said:

So I think I am close - I have this set now

 

But I am not using Elevation yet...just Azimuth...how do I use Elevation?

The way you have this programming setup makes it very difficult to modify if you get the numbers slightly off. You just need to add in an AND statement.

 

 

I'm thinking about making some modifications to my driver that makes this programming easier.  I get that tracking the sun for each shade can be complex.  Once you get it dialed in thought, it works very well.