DIY sunshine meter for less than £50

[Weavit]

Hi everyone.   I guess that a good number of you on this forum have weather stations.   My wife and I have been keeping weather records and publishing them on our website since 1996.   We started with a Davis Weather Wizard, but when that became faulty we changed to a TFA Sinus, both augmented by a sunshine meter, made for us in 2000 by our neighbour.  This was an electronic device using photoelectric cells, but this developed a fault earlier this year.   I decided to update our neighbour’s idea using new electronics parts that have since become available.    The result is that I have produced a meter which produces a pretty accurate total of sunshine hours for less than £50.   As a Campbell-Stokes recorder is very expensive, difficult to site and costly to run, I thought one or two of you might like to copy my machine.

Rather than put all the details here, I have put them on our website (not selling anything and no adverts) :-

www.trolver.co.uk/Sun meter.html

Happy to answer any queries

 

[Dorsetbred]

Interesting approach for a reasonable outlay.

[cowdog]

On 18/12/2018 at 14:31, Weavit said:

Hi everyone.   I guess that a good number of you on this forum have weather stations.   My wife and I have been keeping weather records and publishing them on our website since 1996.   We started with a Davis Weather Wizard, but when that became faulty we changed to a TFA Sinus, both augmented by a sunshine meter, made for us in 2000 by our neighbour.  This was an electronic device using photoelectric cells, but this developed a fault earlier this year.   I decided to update our neighbour’s idea using new electronics parts that have since become available.    The result is that I have produced a meter which produces a pretty accurate total of sunshine hours for less than £50.   As a Campbell-Stokes recorder is very expensive, difficult to site and costly to run, I thought one or two of you might like to copy my machine.

 

Rather than put all the details here, I have put them on our website (not selling anything and no adverts) :-

 

www.trolver.co.uk/Sun meter.html 

Happy to answer any queries

 

Sun Meter self build - www.trolver.co.uk/Sun meter.html

Hi add a proper link to the above as the space in your address will mess around most browsers (also its not good practice to put spaces in addresses in part due to this).

 

Also this is a good idea but it could be done a lot cheaper via the use of a server to log all the data instead, then all you would need is a Nodemcu (the Arduino copy) and the light detector, assuming you have a good enough WiFi signal. Cost about £5 total, bar housing and USB power supply - you can even solar power the Nodemcu's as they draw so little power but is likely a lot less hassle and cheaper to just site within reach of an electricity socket (e.g. on top of a shed).