Hello,
I’ve been cooking this idea for a while, but I am stil looking for ways to improve it before I start putting it into practice.
My apartment’s bedrooms are right under the roof, with roof windows. Because of this the heat transfer is noticeably higher then desired so I am looking to do something about it. Right now I am manually doing the following: during winter I close the shutters at night and from late spring to early autumn I close them while it is sunny.
Now the night part is easy to automate, no problems there. But the day part can pose some challenges when it comes to detecting the right conditions. The right conditions would be the following at the same time:
- when nobody upstairs
- when temperature above a certain level (1 - 2 °C above temperature at sunrise)
- when the sun is shining
The last one I find a bit tricky. Is there any sensor that could be glued to the window, be small enough and detect light level (maybe even charge itself in the process)? I am imagining something as big as a matchbox, powered by a small rechargeable (or by a simple coin cell battery if it would endure heat better), detecting the light intensity via a photovoltaic cell (like those found in the garden lights) that would charge the battery at the same time.
Has anybody done something like this? If so, please share your ideas.
Thanks!