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Radiation, ET & UV?

Discussion specific to Davis weather stations
moelycrio
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 01 Feb 2009 1:10 pm
Weather Station: Davis Vantage Pro 2 +
Location: moelycrio, Flintshire
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by moelycrio »

Steve,
Hi i'm new here, great program . I read about the questions about sun hours. I did an algorhythem in Delphi some time back to calculate sun hours from weatherlink as the weathelink one was rubbush. As I remeber it used long lat & date to calculate day length, sun height, & total possible radiation then devided it by actual radiation to give sun hours which seemes to read correct compaired both to our sunchart and other local weather stations. If you want I can let you have it .
UV and Rad trends would be a good addition to cumulus although I realise you're a busy man 8-)
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steve
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by steve »

Hmm. Cumulus is written in Delphi, so if your code was easy to add, I might consider doing it. There would still be quite a bit of work involved in displaying it, and of course to be of any use it would at least have to be logged to dayfile.txt...

Steve
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Paul C
Posts: 538
Joined: Thu 19 Jun 2008 7:45 am
Weather Station: Davis VP2 with solar
Operating System: Windows 10
Location: Brampton, Cumbria, UK
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by Paul C »

My existing sunshine recorder showed 3.3hrs of sunshine yesterday, using the programme I downloaded and made reference to earlier it stated 4.1hrs.
Paul C
Brampton, Cumbria, UK
117m ASL
http://www.bramptonweather.co.uk
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steve
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by steve »

hungerdunger wrote:Steve - if you've got Freeview (or possibly Sky), you'll find the Elbow concert is also in vision on one of the BBC's Red Button channels at the moment (on a continuous loop, but I don't know for how long)
We don't even have a TV! :-)

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steve
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by steve »

Paul C wrote:My existing sunshine recorder showed 3.3hrs of sunshine yesterday, using the programme I downloaded and made reference to earlier it stated 4.1hrs.
That's not bad. I still haven't got around to reading John's page about it.

Steve
moelycrio
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 01 Feb 2009 1:10 pm
Weather Station: Davis Vantage Pro 2 +
Location: moelycrio, Flintshire
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by moelycrio »

Steve,
I sent you something to your email address.
Regards
Dave
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steve
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by steve »

Received, many thanks. I'm thinking now that I probably won't put it into this version of Cumulus, but will do something in Cumulus 2.

Steve
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Paul C
Posts: 538
Joined: Thu 19 Jun 2008 7:45 am
Weather Station: Davis VP2 with solar
Operating System: Windows 10
Location: Brampton, Cumbria, UK
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by Paul C »

Steve

Will there be definatley something in Cumulus 2 for sunshine hours ?

I am struggling with this WL reporter to produce anything at all now, desperate to have some meaningfull sunshine totals etc.

OR unless anybody has anything else I can use in the interim

thanks
Paul C
Brampton, Cumbria, UK
117m ASL
http://www.bramptonweather.co.uk
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steve
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by steve »

Paul C wrote:Will there be definatley something in Cumulus 2 for sunshine hours ?
Yes.

Eventually :)

Steve
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Paul C
Posts: 538
Joined: Thu 19 Jun 2008 7:45 am
Weather Station: Davis VP2 with solar
Operating System: Windows 10
Location: Brampton, Cumbria, UK
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by Paul C »

Good Luck :D

I,m sure what ever you create it will work. I have had some help today from John Dann at prodata, he has got the WL reporter to work and used my data. This is how the sunshine pans out

Weatherlink Solar - BS Hours ( bright sunlight ) 42.1hrs
My old fashioned sunshine recorder on card - 44.1hrs

I think overall a good result and comparison. I think the bench mark of above 100w/m2 was used.
Paul C
Brampton, Cumbria, UK
117m ASL
http://www.bramptonweather.co.uk
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moelycrio
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 01 Feb 2009 1:10 pm
Weather Station: Davis Vantage Pro 2 +
Location: moelycrio, Flintshire
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by moelycrio »

The problem of using a benchmark like 100 w/m2 is that 100 w in the winter is a sunny day in the summer it's a thunderstorm. Like may things in life it's about beer! in the case beers law, from calculating sun height it is simple to calculate the distance of atmosphere the light has to travel through, then use beers law to calculate the losses through that air, that will then arrive at what sunshine is, sun height can be calculated on a day by day bases, the only issue is that all solar sensors don't seem equal :( .
Incidently although nothing to do with sun hours I'm working on a php version of cumulus using realtime.log and mysql. I hope when I've finished it will look like cumulus but on the net. Just need a month of Sundays. What I've done so far can be seen at http://cambriantiming.plushost.co.uk/cu ... screen.php . Yesterdays extremes are next but currently I'm working away which is a bitch.
Regards
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broadstairs
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Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by broadstairs »

I have commented on this sunshine hours thing in the past both here and elsewhere. (Oops it was earlier in this same thread :oops: )

I believe the WL way of doing things is fraught with problems. As Steve said 100w/m² can be an overcast summer day or a quite bright day in winter. The solar sensor used by Davis in the VP range measures total solar radiation and this will vary very considerably between the seasons, you get a peak in summer of somewhere in the 1000+ w/m² to a peak in winter of some 350+ w/m² and that also depends on your latitude above or below the equator. The value of 100w/m² is for a sensor which measures direct radiation only and to my knowledge no amateur weather station sensor is capable of doing this, so I suspect that WL does something else with the readings before it compares it to the 100w/m² threshold, I know that if I took the raw solar data from my VP and used this measure I would have ridiculous sunshine hours being reported. I do have a PHP script which is capable of producing the minute by minute maximum expected values in w/m² for any location in the world for any day and from experience it stands up quite well, even though there are some simplifications in the maths.

Stuart
ntserver
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon 02 Mar 2009 10:00 pm

Re: Radiation, ET & UV?

Post by ntserver »

Hi

I have a Davis VP2 with solar radiation sensor, and I would like to get the data visible in Cumulus, not so much to know about the sun hours, more to see the amount of energy that are produced.
Is that possible to have that info added both to the application and to the webpage

Thanks for your great work

Tomas
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