Photonostics - Solar Panel Efficiency Monitoring

Welcome to Photonostics for solar panel efficiency monitoring, especially useful for DIY project users. My monitor makes sure external factors such as:

• Dust Accumulation

• Sudden shading

• Overheating

don't cause sudden losses in the efficiency of your panel(s) while going unnoticed.

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Hardware:

Components Needed:

• DS18B20 Waterproof: Temperature

• KY-018 LDR: Light Intensity + part of baseline ratio

• INA219: Measure Power produced + Voltage

• ESP32: The Brain: Send data to website + Serial monitoring

• Solar Panel: To measure power produced + voltage

• Buck Converter (Optional): Connect INA219 VIN- and VIN+ to Buck Converter + which should also be connected to Solar Panel positive

• Load: Either connected to Buck Converter or directly to solar panel

  • if directly: same connection steps as buck converter except replace buck converter with load
  • else: no need to think much about this

• 3.3V battery/5V battery connected directly to USB entry point of ESP32: Power ESP32

- For More Info: Click Here

Where to place Components

• INA219, ESP32: Close to Panel but inside enclosure

• KY-018: On top of the Solar Panel angled exactly how Panel is angled

• DS18B20 Probe Sensor: Stick outside ideally near panel to measure ambient air temperature

Arduino IDE Libraries Needed:

Preinstalled:

• Wire.h: For I2C Communication

• WiFi.h: To make sure WiFi status is OK before HTTP requests, etc

• WiFiClientSecure.h: Manage required encryption for the HTTPS requests

• Preferences.h: To store device id and device api key in non-voltatile memory of ESP32 (NVS)

Install Required:

• WiFiManager.h: To allow users to connect to a network without hardcoding credentials

• ArduinoJson.h: To send data to server via JSON

• DallasTemperature.h: To get temp readings

• OneWire.h: DS18B20 functions on OneWire protocol to initialize sensor

• Adafruit_INA219.h: For INA219 functions

• HTTPClient.h: For HTTP requests

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Software:

Tech Used:

• Flask Backend on Render

• HTML/CSS/JS/Jinja/Bootstrap - Frontend

• PostgreSQL Database on Supabase

• Uptimerobot

• The Following APIs:

  • VAPID: send push notifications
  • Brevo: send reset password emails

• The Following Libraries:

  • flask: backend microframework
  • flask_limiter: rate limit requests
  • psycopg2: PostgreSQL database
  • os: get env variables + serve robots.txt and service worker
  • dotenv: load env variables to use
  • contextlib: database cursor automation
  • datetime: inject year to footer, expiry of auth tokens, time graphs + dynamic sitemap lastmod date
  • secrets: generate auth tokens
  • werkzeug: hash passwords and check them
  • re: regex of device ids
  • email: make body of password reset emails
  • smtplib: send password reset emails
  • pywebpush: send the push notifications themselves
  • json: decode the notification payload
  • logging: log warnings/errors in dashboard
  • threading: make responses faster
  • hashlib: hash API keys
  • concurrent: have 4 thread workers ongoing to send notifications
  • matplotlib: generate and plot the graphs used in the Analytics page
  • base64: render graph as png into html template
  • io: stores generated graph in internal RAM instead of creating a new image file for each graph

Live Demo:

To check out the website: Click Here

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Licensing:

The device itself is licensed under the MIT license - may be edited upon, improved, etc For further details: Click Here

The website is licensed under the GNU GPL V3 license - For further details: Click Here

Author:

Saif Kayyali