Setup

Step 1a: Install argos from https://github.com/p-e-w/argos

Step 1b: Maybe install pvlib (and numba if you wish): python3 -m pip install --upgrade --user pvlib

Step 2: Maybe restart gnome-shell

Step 3: Enable argos in gnome-extensions-app

Step 4: Create config file ~/.config/argos-sunpos.json

{
  "latitude": 64.1,
  "longitude": 22.1,
  "altitude": 123,
  "timezone": "Europe/Helsinki",
  "offline": true
}

Step 5: Make sure needed directories exist:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

Step 6: install -m755 argos-sunpos-service.py ~/.local/bin && install -m 600 argos-sunpos.service ~/.local/share/systemd/user && systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable argos-sunpos && systemctl --user start argos-sunpos

Step 7: install -d ~/.config/argos && install -m755 sunpos.30s.py ~/.config/argos/

Step 8: Sun information is shown and updated every 30 seconds, and the config file is read on each run. If you edit sunpos.30s.py and your editor makes backup of it with execution bit set, those scripts are also run, so maybe don't create backups in that directory [this is a reported bug or feature in argos (year 2018)]. To update every 5s, rename the script to sunpos.5s.py.

For more accurate solar irradiance estimation, change offline to false. Location is truncated to one decimal in this case when sent to NASA's API (11 km error). With offline=true a less accurate Ineichen model is used, otherwise Simplified Solis. UV Index estimation takes into account the location's elevation.

Testing

Status:

echo "STATUS" | socat - ABSTRACT-CONNECT:argos-sunpos-$(id -u) | jq .
ss -xlp | grep argos-sunpos

Benchmark:

time echo "GET" | socat - ABSTRACT-CONNECT:argos-sunpos-$(id -u)

Restart the service if you change the python service:

systemctl --user restart argos-sunpos

Screenshot