Simple solar radiation chart card with background

Who it’s for

Solar farm operators, agricultural irrigation planners, and environmental monitoring teams ask “how has solar irradiance changed over time?” They want a clean irradiance curve with a recognizable background for field station or control-room screens.

What it does

A sensor currently reading 380 W/m² shows an orange value — Moderate — above a chart that reveals the day’s irradiance curve, displayed over the preset background image.

• Large current solar-radiation value color-coded across five bands from None to Very High
• Time-series chart of solar-radiation readings over the selected time window, averaged per interval
• Decorative background image bundled with the widget, with a white overlay that keeps the text readable
• Shows one sensor’s data; it does not compare multiple pyranometers or show period-over-period deltas

How to set up

Data keys

Key	Role	Type	Description
radiation	Chart series	Timeseries	Solar irradiance in W/m²; drives the chart. The Latest value overlay is automatically derived from this same key
Latest	Latest value	Timeseries	The headline figure above the chart. Its own color ranges are where the band colors are edited

The widget ships with a simulated function datasource key labeled Solar Radiation, so it draws random values until you point the datasource at a device and rename the key.

To point it at your own device: open the dashboard in edit mode, open the widget’s Datasources, pick the entity or entity alias, and replace the function key with the key your device reports.

If the key has never reported for the selected time window, the chart is empty and the value overlay shows no data.

Value ranges

Range (W/m²)	Level	Color
0	None	Blue
0–250	Low	Green
250–500	Moderate	Orange
500–1000	High	Orange
1000+	Very High	Red

How to customize

• To swap the background image — open the widget settings and set Background to a different image or switch to a solid color.
• To adjust how much the background shows through — change the Overlay opacity; lower values reveal more of the image, higher values push it further back.
• To use your own irradiance thresholds — edit the color ranges on the Latest data key; adjust the five default bands to match your site’s conditions.
• To hide or show the chart — toggle Show chart in the widget settings.
• To change the chart line color — set Chart color.
• To hide the entity name subtitle or the timestamp — turn off Show subtitle or Show date.

Tips

• Use this card when the shape of the irradiance curve matters more than the period-over-period change. Add the full solar radiation chart card if you need a delta W/m² figure alongside the chart.
• If the background image reduces contrast, raise the Overlay opacity to keep the text readable from a distance.
• A flat-topped curve mid-day indicates cloud cover clipping peak irradiance; a clean bell curve confirms clear-sky conditions.