Open-Source Smart Wireless IoT Solar Sensor

IoT (Internet of Things)-enabled solar irradiance sensors are evolving toward energy harvesting, interoperability, and open-source availability, yet current solutions remain either costly, closed, or limited in robustness. Based on a thorough literature review and identification of future trends, we propose an open-source smart wireless sensor that employs a small photovoltaic module simultaneously as sensing element and energy harvester. The device integrates an ESP32 microcontroller, precision ADC (Analog-to-Digital converter), and programmable load to sweep the PV (photovoltaic) I–V (Current–Voltage) curve and compute irradiance from electrical power and solar-cell temperature via a calibrated third-order polynomial. Supporting Modbus RTU (Remote Terminal Unit)/TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), and ZigBee, the sensor operates from batteries or supercapacitors through sleep–wake cycles. Validation against industrial irradiance meters across 0–1200 W/m² showed average errors below 5%, with deviations correlated to irradiance volatility and sampling cadence. All hardware, firmware, and data-processing tools are released as open source to enable reproducibility and distributed PV monitoring applications.