Detecting direct sunlight using lux sensor... and others?

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1

I have an Tempest weather station on the top of my house (out of any shadow of tree or similar) which amongst other things has lux and uv sensors.

However I’m having an hard time determining when there is actual direct sunlight versus cloudy and what not. An static lux value simply does not suffice, as direct sunlight lux varies through both year and day which makes an static value unreliable.

So I was wondering how people have solved this?

I intend to use this with an cover automation and only close the cover if direct sunlight

2

What about the UV sensor, could that help to detect direct sunlight? I don’t have such a sensor, but I would imagine it reacting to direct sunlight too.

3

It seems the uv measurement is just on an different scale of the lux value, so either one would just give the same “output”

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4

Hmm yeah those graphs looks pretty similar. I wonder what they’d show if you used a torchlight on them. The UV sensor should stay pretty quiet in that case.

Anyway maybe you can put some kind of filter on top of the lux sensor, so it only maxes out in direct sunlight?

I’d admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about as with the lux sensors I’m using, I have no difficulty detecting direct sunlight (they shoot up like crazy).