Nothing like applying a little science and technical ingenuity to make an onerus task easier and faster. I could see this being very useful to a gardener who is trying to site a new plot, tree or home plantings. I have toyed around with using video or time-lapse to accomplish this task, but this is certainly easier and much more accurate.
DIY shade finder tool takes the tedium out of solar surveys
[Steven Dufresne] does a lot of tinkering with solar-powered applications, a hobby which can be very time consuming if done right. One process he carries out whenever building a solar installation is creating a sun chartto determine how much (or little) sun the target area will get.
The process requires [Steven] to take elevation and Azimuth measurements of many different points, which often consumes about half an hour of his time. While taking measurements recently, he started thinking about how he could improve the process, and came up with a stellar solution that reduces the process down to a one-minute task.