The sun is incredibly important to the contextual smart home. Accurate information about the sun plays a key role in delivering a great user experience.
We use a software algorithm to predict both the azimuth and zenith for our location, so our @smartest_home always knows where the sun is in the sky.
Azimuth is the angle along the horizon, with zero degrees corresponding to North, and increasing in a clockwise fashion. Thus, 90° is East, 180° is South, and 270° is West. In practice our tracker picks up the sun from the East (at 90°) and tracks it across the sky to the West (at 270°). Once the azimuth is greater than 270°, our tracker moves to 90°, to pick up the sun in the morning.
The solar zenith angle is the angle between the zenith (a point vertically above the observer) and the centre of the Sun. This typically means that an angle greater 90° is below the horizon. We have designed our solar tracker to be able to face vertically upwards (0°) and also to face slightly below the horizontal (100°).
Because our tracker is under complete control by our contextual smart home, it can use local weather information and measurements to protect the tracker from adverse weather. In high winds it will face vertically upwards, to present as small a side profile as possible.
