RaGPS: A software application for determining extraterrestrial radiation in mobile devices with GPS

The application of mobile devices to the food and agriculture sector has been increased notably in the last years, being most of these devices endowed with Global Positioning System by satellites (GPS). This paper presents a new software application developed with LabVIEW for determining extraterrestrial solar radiation, equivalent evaporation and other parameters related to solar position from Global Position Data in handheld devices. These parameters are useful in many applications, such as validating the data supplied by agricultural weather stations, estimating the water needs of the crops where there are no close weather stations, or providing essential information when considering a determined place for installing photovoltaic panels or solar water heating systems. There is currently no software in the market which confers this utility to a mobile device. A comparison between data calculated by the proposed application and data supplied by an agricultural weather station was carried out for evaluation and validation purposes. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.