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A project log for SOL: Long-term solar intensity sensing

SOL is a project to develop a solar powered, connected solar intensity sensor (also known as a pyranometer)

jake-wachlinJake Wachlin 06/23/2018 at 01:150 Comments

After some cleanup and documentation, I have added the hardware files and initial Arduino compatible library for SOL to a GitHub repo (linked on main page). The sections relating to WiFi provisioning and uploading data will not remain in the future, and are simply some examples I hacked together to get the basics working. Those sections have major usability and security issues so be aware. The code also has a large amount of debugging serial port printing left in (although removed during compilation if desired).

At the same time, I have been learning about web development and trying to spec out the minimum functions of a web app/phone app that SOL would require. Below are some images with results from my brainstorming.

Apologies for my near-illegible writing and drawings, but the idea is to build a basic phone app in Thunkable, which uses React native to generate native iPhone and Android apps using a simple drag-and-drop interface. Thunkable has an interface component called a webviewer, which (obviously) simply displays a certain webpage. This can be used during WiFi provisioning to point the app to the correct IP address on the SOL network where the user can enter their SSID and password. It can also be used to view data served by a web app. How that web app is built is still very unknown, but I have been doing tutorials with the python Flask and Django interfaces and Bokeh for plotting data. Python anywhere could be used to host the web app for free (for small amounts of data throughput, which should be fine for testing SOL).

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