Team Surya

Aaruush, Chennai | You Are My Sunshine

Project Surya

High-Level Project Summary

Our idea solves the problem of accessibility and good usage of sunlight data from NASA's POWER portal by displaying the important data in a simplified format through a well-designed app so that any user from all over the world can access the data with ease. Our app can solve some of the most common problems which a person faces while dealing with solar panels. Users can get entire information ranging from whether to buy a solar panel system to check if his/her panels are in perfect condition or not through a single app in the palm of the user's hand. It also helps to calculate energy savings and environmental savings. The user can see a graphical representation of solar panels output.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PktUn4n8T5oDpySSEoZYT0H_HgbGEy3e/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104645475691622615290&rtpof=true&sd=true

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/gautamVaja/sunshineProject/releases/tag/v1.0.0alpha

Detailed Project Description

We developed an app to show the solar parameters and plot them in a graph. In the app the user can choose any location or his/her present location and can obtain graphs for various solar parameters like All Sky Shortwave Downward Radiation. Though some graphs are blank because data was not available for some parameters on the POWER portal.

We also fetched maps from reactive native maps and google maps API. We fetched some data from POWER APIs using some functions and plotted the graphs. This is how the app works.

We present solar data effectively and also the user can make rational decision on whether he/she should buy the panel or not.

Our aim is to provide available sunshine data and weather updates in simplified form through an app. Our main objective is to help users to compare the efficiency of their solar panels and make an estimate of available power by the means of graphs using some parameters. We are also focusing on providing users with the amount of sunlight available in the past and present-day so that they can make well-informed decisions whether to use the available sunshine in a smarter manner by installing solar panels and other solar appliances. Users will have access to various parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and pressure so that they get more insight into the weather in accordance with their locality. We are also looking forward to working on food preparation methods using solar cookers and various food drying techniques to remove moisture with the available sunshine.

All the research done and resources used are well documented in this document.

React native : base framework

JavaScript : base language

Integration of maps: react-native-maps and google maps API

Integration of graphs: victory native

Development system: windows 11

Apk build using : gradle framework

Ios app: couldn't be built because of having neither mac osx nor iphone

Android apk language: java

Ios app language: objective C(not built the binary file)

Space Agency Data

We used the NASA POWER website and API. We made functions to call API and then get the JSON data and used that to plot graphs. We researched all the parameters present on the POWER website and came to a conclusion on which parameters are the most relevant to our project. Using these parameters we could estimate the power output of the solar panel system of the user.

Hackathon Journey

The whole journey was very interesting but also tiresome. We learnt a lot of new things while doing this project and had fun. This was our first hackathon so we faced many difficulties and resolved them by conducting team meetings and interacting with the mentors. Our team felt that the challenge “YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE” has great potential since solar energy is going to be the future of renewable energy. It was a great experience in being a part of this hackathon. We would like to thank the organisers for providing all the resources necessary to build the project and helping us throughout the process.

References