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mrschmidt avatar image
mrschmidt asked

Xx hours before Sunset in Streetlight?

Hi,


I have a SmartSolar MPPT 75/10 that I’m using to control supplemental lighting in our chicken coop. (Chickens need 13-14 hours of light a day to trigger egg production.)

The SmartSolar controller is the best option out there but it would be perfect if I could have it turn on the load 14 hours *before* sunset and off at Sunrise.

Anyone know of a way to trick it into doing this? As far as I can tell, I’m going to have to manually adjust the timing every week throughout the year.

thanks,

Brian

VEConfigure 3feature request
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Todd Wackford avatar image Todd Wackford commented ·
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ripper avatar image
ripper answered ·

I dont get it. That makes it turn on from early in the morning (still dark) till late in the morning (already light). And throughout most of the year it shuts it off only shortly later after like 3 hours to 2 minutes. While rest of the year the light is on all night and is off for 2 minutes to 3h while its light already...

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mrschmidt avatar image
mrschmidt answered ·

Basically, I need to get 14 hours of light but it can’t be added after sunset otherwise they won’t go to bed.

The controller figures out when sunrise and sunset happen already. I just need to be able to tell it to turn on 14 hours before sunset and turn off at sunrise. This means the light would come on at, say 5 am and turn off at 7 am (sunrise) based on sunset at 7 pm.

In the summer, the light may never come on in the winter it may be on for 3-4 hours, but it would always shut off at sunrise (and not turn on if it’s already light out).

Does that make it more clear?

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ripper avatar image
ripper answered ·

That I understand. Beats me though. Only thing I can come up with would be an arduino. Set mppt to on and off as signal for sun up and down. Have the arduino count the length of time on the first day, Determine the difference to 14h, have him start the light next morning, reset the counter and count again in the background for the day after. Like that it will track the year with a day late.

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mrschmidt avatar image mrschmidt commented ·

Yeah, I think this would be fairly straightforward to add to the app itself. It's already tracking Sunset times and it knows when the light hits. Seems like the device could sort it out. I bought this instead of an Arduino...sounds like I should have bought an Arduino and a cheap MPPT controller.


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