Volets & Soleil smart home integration, free and open source
Advised shutter closure per facade, from the sun position. Local, no account.
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.0
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
For each facade of your house, this integration tells whether the sun shines on it and how much to close the shutters to keep the house cool in summer, or to let the sun in during winter. Everything is computed locally from the position of the sun: no account, no internet access, no API.
The integration never moves a shutter itself: your scenes do, with the values it publishes.
Developed without shutters connected to a test Gladys: feedback welcome on the forum.
What you get
One device per facade, with:
- Sun on the facade (yes / no): the sun is above the threshold and in front of the wall;
- Advised closure (0-100 %), detailed below;
- Direct sunlight (0-100 %): the share of the sun's strength hitting the wall,
100 × cos θ, whatever the season; - Sun incidence angle (°): 0° when the sun faces the wall, 90° for grazing light, or when the sun is not on the facade;
- Next sun arrival and Next sun departure, in local time (
14:32,tomorrow 07:12), over the next 48 hours.
Everything is recomputed every minute; only the values that change are sent to Gladys.
The advised closure. With θ the angle between the sun's rays and the facade, and h the sun elevation:
closure = 100 × cos θ × min(1, h / 15°), rounded to the nearest 10 %.
A west facade at 7 pm in July (sun low and in front) gets 90 %; a south facade at noon (sun high, rays nearly parallel to the wall) gets 40 %; the second factor softens the first minutes of a low, still weak sun. In winter, the advice is always 0 %: open, to let the sun warm the house. Steps of 10 % avoid moving the shutters every minute.
Configuration
- Location: the coordinates of your house in Gladys (Settings → Houses). The integration asks for the permission to read them when installed. Without them, it shows an error and checks again every 10 minutes.
- Language of names and texts: the language of the device names and of the texts sent to Gladys.
- Season: Automatic (months) uses the summer months below (a range that crosses the new year works, for the southern hemisphere); Always summer or Always winter. The integration cannot read your thermometer itself: to follow the outdoor temperature, use the Force the season scene action (see below).
- Minimum sun elevation: below this height above the horizon, the sun is ignored (5° by default).
- Facades 1 to 6: fill in the orientation of each facade, the direction its windows look at: degrees
from the north, clockwise (90 = east, 180 = south, 270 = west), or a compass point in English letters (N, NE,
E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, and NNE, ENE…).
Ois read as west (French and Spanish). An empty orientation ignores the slot. Optional:- Name: the device name (otherwise "Facade S");
- Field of view: 180° for a flat wall, less when deep window recesses or side walls hide the sun earlier;
- Horizon mask: the elevation hidden by a hill, a building or a balcony in front of the facade.
Tip: a map application gives the orientation of your walls; a facade facing south-south-west is about 200°.
Actions
- Show the advice now: the season in force and the advice of every facade, to check the orientations.
Scenes
Trigger "Sun reaches a facade": choose the facade and when: on arrival, 15 min, 30 min or 1 hour before.
Variables: the facade, the arrival time, the minutes before arrival, the highest advised closure of the
coming sunny period, and the season (summer or winter).
Examples:
- Lower the living room shutters before the sun: trigger "Sun reaches a facade", Living room, 30 min before →
condition: the season variable is
summer→ set the shutter position. - Close more when it gets strong: trigger on the Advised closure of the facade device above 70 % → set the shutter position to 30 % (in Gladys, a shutter position counts the opening).
- Reopen when the sun leaves: trigger on Sun on the facade going to "no" → open the shutters.
Action "Force the season": summer, winter, or back to the configuration. For example a scene "every day at 10 am, if the outdoor temperature is above 25 °C → Force the season: summer". The choice is kept across restarts. Output: the season in force.
Dashboard
The Sun on the facades widget lists every facade with its advised closure and the next sun time, the season in force, and three buttons to force the season (the active one shows a check mark). Its settings hide the season line or the buttons.
Limits and troubleshooting
- "No house location": set the coordinates of the house in Settings → Houses; the first house with coordinates is used.
- "Unreadable facade orientation": fix the orientation of the slots named in the message (degrees or compass points).
- The model is geometric: no clouds, no weather. Trees and neighbours are approximated by the minimum elevation and the horizon mask.
- Times are shown in the time zone of Gladys. A sunny period shorter than 5 minutes may be missed.
- Logs: the container logs only the lifecycle; set
LOG_LEVEL=debugfor every computation.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Volets & Soleil asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it works | section | No | The sun position is computed locally from the location of your house in Gladys. Describe each facade below: one device per facade, with the advised shutter closure. |
| Language of names and texts | select | No | |
| Season | select | No | Summer: close to keep the house cool. Winter: always 0 % to let the sun in. Automatic: summer during the months below. A scene or the widget can force the season. |
| Summer starts in | select | No | |
| Summer ends after | select | No | |
| Minimum sun elevation (°) | number | No | Below this height above the horizon, the sun is ignored (trees, neighbours). |
| Facade 1 | section | No | Leave the orientation empty to ignore a facade. Orientation: degrees from the north, clockwise (90 = east, 180 = south, 270 = west), or N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | Width of sky seen by the windows: 180 for a flat wall, less for deep window recesses or side walls. |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No | Sun elevation hidden by a hill, a building or a balcony in front of this facade, 0 if clear. |
| Facade 2 | section | No | |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No | |
| Facade 3 | section | No | |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No | |
| Facade 4 | section | No | |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No | |
| Facade 5 | section | No | |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No | |
| Facade 6 | section | No | |
| Orientation | string | No | |
| Name (optional) | string | No | |
| Field of view (°) | number | No | |
| Horizon mask (°) | number | No |
How to install Volets & Soleil in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Volets & Soleil appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-volets-soleil:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-volets-soleil.
Volets & Soleil requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
Volets & Soleil is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation