Daylight

[Disclaimer: This app is still being worked on and has yet to enter the build phase due to my complete lack of skills in app development]

Once in a while I have something I need to do before it’s dark, that, for whatever reason, I have left until the end of the day. And, once in a while, I may miss the window of opportunity and end up performing the activity in the dark, whether it’s mowing the lawn, taking my daughter to the park, or proposing marriage on a beach at [after] sunset!!

Now, you may think “there are many apps that tell you when sunset is, idiot”, and you’d be right, but, unless you’re a vampire and have never seen a sunset, you’d remember that the lights don’t just go out as soon as the sun has gone beyond the horizon! [Although it did get dark pretty quick on that beach!?!] Normally you’d have plenty of time to do many tasks, depending on location and the time of year (between 30 and 50 minutes where I live).

Therefore, every time I need to do something before it’s dark I find myself wishing there was an easy way to know how long I have without various lookups and some maths.

What I wanted was something that shows me how long I have left until it’s too dark to do the task I need to do. So, perhaps something with a simple countdown to darkness? And I guess we’ll need to see the current time and the calculated daylight end time.

But, as this is for me, numbers may not be enough for me to grasp the urgency of the situation, so I’m thinking I need some kind of visual representation of how dark it will be at different times, so I can look ahead to see when it will be too dark for the task I need to do.

This depends on what we want to do. Some things need more light, some things need less.

Building a shed, for instance would need some decent light to be able to read instructions, whereas going for a walk or run would require just enough light to see where you’re going (depending on the individual, and location, of course).

[Tasks that require daylight could include: going for a run, washing the car, mowing the lawn, walking the cat, reaping the crops, driving your solar-powered car, avoiding vampire, hiking to Mordor, feeding the mogwai, knowing when The Nightman cometh, etc.]

Is darkness subjective or is there a socially defined threshold?

We could decide this through experience and research OR we could ask for user feedback in the app? (ie. add a button asking ‘is this right’ or ‘tap this when you feel it’s too dark’)

Is the data already available or will we need to create it?

Research shows it may be a case of sunset/sunrise +/- 30mins, however, this doesn’t take account of weather or other atmospheric fluctuations?

What could affect sky colour?

This would most likely require actual research, but off the top of my head… time of day, time of year, the angle of the sun above the horizon, sunrise & sunset times, cloud coverage, temperature, precipitation, latitude, altitude?, land mass?, wind?, the chemical balance of the atmosphere??

According to the internet:

Daylight is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight outdoors during the daytime, which includes:
Sunlight [the total spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun],
Diffuse sky radiation [solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface after having been scattered by molecules or suspensoids in the atmosphere] and (often) both of these reflected by the Earth and terrestrial objects, like landforms and buildings.

It is the diffuse sky radiation that mainly affects the color.

[Don’t worry, this isn’t the end of the article, I’m just too busy to finish it right now. I promise I’ll add some more as soon as possible!]