Track Sun Position for Automated Shades

[curtman3]

I'm working on getting home automation setup on my parents house. They have some living room windows that face west, which already have automated blinds on those windows. For a couple of hours in the evening, the sunlight blasts through the window right in to your face.

Is there anything out there that monitors sun angle by location that can be imported in to Hubitat? Then I can create a rule to adjust the shades based on sun angle. Or if there are any other suggestion to accomplish this.

I thought about time, but based on the time of year, the sun position is different so time wouldn't be that effective.

Thanks in advance!

[Sebastien]

One option would be an Illuminance sensor. Zooz and Hue both have some that combine Illuminance with motion, temp, etc. There are also some stand-alone ones, but those that I have bought in the past are not currently available on AliExpress.

The shades could be set to come down if the illuminance is above the level at which sun is coming in the room.

[augoisms]

@curtman3 I wrote such a driver

[RELEASE] SunCalc Driver

I created a driver for calculating the position of the sun using the SunCalc.js library. I use this to automatically close my roller shades on the west side of the house when the sun starts to come through the windows. The driver uses your hub's lat/long to calculate the position of the sun at the current time. You can choose how often you wish to update. I've found that the altitude doesn't change more than a degree in 5 minutes. Hopefully this is helpful to someone! Altitude is the angle u…

[curtman3]

Great Scott! this is amazing! Thanks so much!

Another reason why I preach Hubitat so much. The community is awesome!

[sidjohn1]

I would say that the suncalc driver and an illuminance sensor working together would be best. This is a rule i use to lower a shade in the winter and use the suns position to set the proper level to block the sun. The tree right outside of the window handles the automation the rest of the year.

[nrus2222]

I use a simpler solution for same problem. It is in WebCoRE, but I'm sure similar possible in RE.

Sun's azimuth has fixed relation with standard time - it is why sundials can be used to tell time. At least in my case, sun's elevation causes my problematic glare only from Fall through early Spring. So, no calculations, just find the times you want to open/close, keep these times in standard time (so they change +/- 1 hr with local daylight savings time), and use logic to only execute during time of year when elevation angle is problematic. A couple additional virtual switches prevent closing if it's cloudy, or if I manually override: