Get to Know Solar Spotter

Welcome to the Solar Spotter tour. Here you'll find what lives where, what each piece is for, and where the detailed guide is when you want the full story on any of it.

Solar Spotter puts today's charging information on one screen and keeps the tools behind two doors — the drop-down menu at top-left, and from that menu the Settings page, where you customise the app to your preferences.

Start with the screen in front of you

The main screen is the workhorse of the app, and it has its own guide — a walk from the top of the screen to the bottom, each part named, each section read as a whole. The way to use it is with the app open beside it: read a section, find it on your screen, and work your way down. Ten minutes and you should have a good hold on what everything means and how it helps.

Two numbers on that screen are worth knowing before you read anything else. Daily draw is what your gear pulls from the battery in twenty-four hours — everything else on the card is measured against it. And the overnight verdict is a projection to sunrise plus two hours, not to first light: it answers whether you wake with something in reserve, not whether you scrape to dawn.

That guide is also where the app's bigger picture is laid out — how telling the app your panels are out, crediting charge to the right source, and building your day-by-day record all connect into one chain. The features below each play a part in it; the main-screen guide is where the whole chain is told once.

The menu, top-left

Everything that isn't the main screen starts behind the menu button in the top-left corner. Top to bottom, exactly as it appears:

AR Solar Alignment Pro

Two ways to set a panel using AR.

1. Overlay Mode is the quick visual check — scan the ground in front of your panel and an overlay of your own panel appears, sitting where it should sit for the timeframe you picked. Move the real panel until it matches. The power figure that comes up beside it is a snapshot taken at the instant you scan, not a live meter — it cannot see you move the panel. Once you have shifted it, tap Re-scan for a fresh reading.

The overlay is built differently on the two platforms, and the guide has a section for each. On an iPhone you put the reticle on the ground in front of the panel and tap to lock. On Android the ground fixes itself the moment a surface is found, and you then tap the two front corners of the panel so the app knows which way it faces. The overlay you end up with is the same either way.

2. Panel Mode is the precise setup tool — go straight to it from the AR selector screen, or tap the button in Overlay Mode once you've scanned, to dial it in further. Lay the phone face up on the panel, top edge of the phone lined up with the top edge of the panel, and it reads the true tilt and direction, then tells you exactly how far to move.

Two things have to be true before either mode will show you a panel. It has to be ticked in Your Gear, because AR only offers the panels your rig is running. And it wants that panel's measurements: leave them blank and the overlay still draws, sized from the wattage instead, and the picker tells you so. No phone can measure a dark, light-absorbing panel reliably by camera, so the app draws what you told it rather than guessing at the shape.

Worth knowing what a proper set-up is worth. On a clear winter day at around 35° latitude, a guessed set-up — angled, but not quite facing towards the equator and usually set too flat — returns about 67% of what the same panel gives set properly. In summer, with the sun high, a guess costs far less; the further you are from the equator the more winter bites. And a guess never looks like one. That's the gap these two close.

Both are sun tools, so they work in daylight. Once the app has a position fix it knows whether the sun is up, and after dark the AR screen waits for morning — with how far below the horizon the sun is printed underneath. Guides: Overlay Mode and Panel Mode.

Your Gear Pro

One home for what you run — Panels, battery, camp gear & rigs. Enter your panels, your battery bank and the gear that draws on it, and every number in the app is derived from your kit instead of a generic one. Keep more than one combination — a light weekender kit and the big-trip setup — as named rigs, and switch between them as you pack. Set it up once through the wizard; it's here for when you want to change or add to your setups.

Two things are worth getting right while you're in here. Panel type is really two questions: what the panel is made of, and whether it stays put. The second matters most. A panel bolted to the roof faces one way all day and is always working; one you set out can be positioned, and only earns while it's out. That is what decides whether the app asks you about it each morning.

Alternate charging — a DC-DC charger, a generator, mains — is set here too. It belongs to the rig rather than to one panel, so you tick it once and every screen agrees, and leaving the amps blank is a real answer: the app falls back to a sensible rate for your own battery. The alternate charging guide covers what it changes.

Switch any battery, camp gear set or rig off (the app checks with you first) and back on with a tap — switching a battery off pauses its Bluetooth too, and it reconnects by itself when you switch it back on.

Planned Charge Pro

Tell the app when you want to charge and everything re-targets to suit — the compass arc, the AR panel targets, the output figures. Three ways to say it: a duration from now, a custom window, or the Best Charging Window (BCW) the app works out from today's actual conditions, live.

On the free tier the toggle gives you three minutes of the Pro view — the planned band on the compass, the full Best Charging Window card, and the hourly conditions strip instead of the three-hourly one. Three minutes in total, not three a day, so spend them on a real setup rather than a poke around. Live conditions and sun times are free either way. And Pro is a once-off purchase: lifetime, unlimited access.

Trip Planner Pro

Plan your trip. Add your stops. Set the dates. Head off! The main screen tells you about where you are — the Trip Planner shows Solar forecast for the camps ahead: the conditions for where you're headed.

It carries a ten-day weather forecast, and it is honest about where that stops being worth acting on. A stop's charging window — and the verdict on its nights — only exist inside the first four days: today and the next three, counted on the stop's own calendar rather than from the day your trip starts. Past that you get an outlook, a grade and a cloud figure with no window attached. The band rolls forward, so a camp a fortnight out fills in as the date comes to you.

For the days inside that band it also tells you which nights your battery should cover and which fall short, and by roughly how much — so you know where some alternate charging is worth planning. That half reads your recorded history rather than the figure you typed, so it leans on the Pro Bluetooth battery link and on having a few days on the board.

There's a trip rating and per-stop notes too, so you can record the good, the bad and the bitey — that top campsite is findable again next time you're travelling through, and the mozzie-infested camp from last time doesn't get another visit!

Trip plans and saved places live on your phone at full precision — the exact spot, your lat/long marked for next time — because the forecast and the route are only used by you, and for you. Guide: the Trip Planner.

Bush Bash Mode Free

Offline mode for remote areas. The sun maths never needed a signal — position, direction and panel targets are worked out on the phone wherever you are. What needs reception is the weather, so Bush Bash keeps your last synced conditions and shows them with their age on screen, rather than pretending old data is live. Flick it on before you drive out of coverage.

Worth knowing what it covers. The main screen's conditions and the three-day outlook are held and keep working out there, verdicts, windows and all. The Trip Planner is not — its stop forecasts live only in memory, so a cold start out of range has nothing to show for them. And while the mode is on, WattsUp writes no new briefings, because there is nothing fresh to build one from. Back in range, switch the mode off and they resume on their own.

Settings

The last stop in the menu, and enough of the app lives in there that it gets its own walk-through below.

Down the Settings page

In the order you'll scroll past them. A few sections only appear when they have a job to do — those are called out as they come.

Audio & Feedback

Haptic feedback is free, on from the start, and worth leaving on — a tap under your finger on the welcome button, on the Planned Charge time wheel and as you land an alignment in AR, and it Works with gloves on. Switch it on and you'll feel one buzz to prove it's working.

Sound effects and voice cues Pro
These are for setting panels by ear in AR Panel Mode: the tones and messages change as you close in, so you can focus on repositioning the panel instead of squinting at a screen angled into the sun glare. There's a third audio option in there as well… but we'll let you find that one, mate.

Units

Celsius or Fahrenheit, metric or imperial. Set once; every figure in the app follows.

Home Location

Optional. Set where home is and the trip planner stops treating your own driveway like a campsite — arrival banners skip stops near home. The Trip Planner Pro also sets home as the default start and end of a trip, and you can edit either inside the trip as you add stops. It's stored on your phone.

Performance

One toggle: Low Power Mode. It eases off the compass animation and stops the weather refreshing on its own — good for long days out when the phone's own battery is low on juice.

WattsUp

The morning briefing: a heads-up notification on the day's solar before you've unfolded anything, built on the device with no tracking. The two tiers get genuinely different briefings — free tells you roughly when the day's best charging falls, Pro names the exact window. Guide: the WattsUp briefing.

It ships switched off, so this is where you turn it on, and your phone will ask for notification permission the first time. Bush Bash Mode pauses it, as above.

Solar Panels — the daily panel check Pro

This section appears once your rig includes at least one panel you put out and pack away — a blanket, a suitcase, a rollable mat. A fixed roof panel never needs it: it is always out, and always counts. The Daily panel check toggle controls the daily ask — the first time you open the app in daylight each day, it checks whether your panels are actually out, because Solar only counts while your panels are out.

Answer THEY'RE OUT and every portable panel is declared out at once; NOT YET declares them all packed. From there you edit per panel: under each portable panel on the main screen sits its own packed-or-out row, so a suitcase can go back in the boot while the blanket stays out.

Switch the ask off and those per-panel rows are the whole control — tap the one under the panel you have just put out or packed away, any time.

One rule is worth carrying out the door with you. An out declaration lapses by itself — at sunset, or overnight, whichever comes first — so yesterday's yes never quietly speaks for today. A packed one does not lapse at all. Pack up on Tuesday, put the panels out on Wednesday and forget to tap, and Wednesday's solar stays withheld all day. The full story of what declaring changes is in the panels out guide.

Energy History Pro

You won't see this section at first, and that's by design. Record seven days with a Bluetooth battery connected — that link is Pro and still in BETA — and it appears quietly: your day-by-day record of what was really harvested and really drawn, waiting rather than announced. That record is also how the app learns your setup: the longer you camp, the closer its answers get to what your gear actually does. It's stored on your phone and used for nothing else.

Above the daily rows sits Where your charge came from, a three-way split between sun, driving and other charging. Driving is the one slice the app can prove, and proving it wants the Motion & Fitness permission on an iPhone, Physical activity on Android. Refuse it and nothing breaks — the alternator's charge simply lands under other charging instead.

Run more than one rig and two pills sit at the top: All rigs for the whole record, and one carrying a rig's name — tap it once to read that rig's days, again to drop the list open, with in use beside the one you're running. Guide: Energy History.

Get Set Up Pro

The Setup Wizard — the guided first run that walks your panels and gear in so the app starts answering about your kit. Once your setup is complete the row retires itself; from then on, changes happen in Your Gear.

Drive Detection Pro

Shows here until you've enabled it. Say yes and the app knows when the rig was being driven, so charge that arrived from the alternator is credited separately from solar — your portable panels stop getting credit for the highway, because they are in the boot. A fixed roof panel is treated differently: it keeps generating on the move, so on a drive only what exceeds its clear-sky ceiling is counted as alternator charge.

It works from the phone's own motion sensing, on the device — Motion & Fitness on an iPhone, Physical activity on Android. All it reads is whether you were in a vehicle: no location, no route, no speed. It's one part of the wider alternate-charging story — DC-DC, generator, plugged into mains — covered in the alternate charging guide.

Your Data Pro

Back up your setup — gear, history, trips, places and your settings — as one block of text: copy it, paste it into Notes or email it to yourself, and paste it back in on a new phone. Because nothing is stored on a server, that saved copy is your backup; it's worth making one before a phone upgrade.

Two things to know before you ever reload one. A restore replaces, and the app's own button says so — Replace my data. The backup's panels overwrite the ones on the phone rather than joining them.

And the undo is a copy you have to take. Tap Copy undo and paste it somewhere you can see it landed, before you tap Reload now — it's gone once you reload. The whole section is Pro and doesn't exist until the store has confirmed your purchase, so on a new phone it's Pro first, then your data. Guide: backing up your setup.

About

A Guides row at the top — in amber, because it is the door to this library — then the website, a rating link, a feedback button that genuinely takes thirty seconds, our socials, the privacy policy and the version number.

Purchases

On the free tier this is Restore Pro purchase — bought Pro before, on a phone you've since replaced or before a reinstall? Tap it and Pro comes back, as long as you're signed in with the same Apple ID or Google account you bought with. Once Pro is on, the row simply says Pro — unlocked on this phone. Restore is on the Pro screen too.

Reset

Reset All Settings puts your preferences back to their defaults, after asking first. Your gear, rigs, trips, history and Pro status stay put.

What's free, and what's Pro

Free gets the working core: the compass with the 3-hour and 6-hour direction bands, the Solar Day reading that grades the rest of today, live conditions and sun times for your exact spot, the WattsUp morning briefing, and Bush Bash Mode.

Free also gets a tomorrow card, and one line on it is worth reading for what it is. The range under Peak Window is a fixed 10am–3pm rule of thumb — the same every day, at every latitude, in both hemispheres. It is the middle of the day, not a window worked out for your sky. The graded verdict and the hours beside it are yours.

Pro — a one-off purchase, not a subscription — adds the tools that work on your setup: both AR alignment modes, Your Gear, Planned Charge and the Best Charging Window, the 3-Day Outlook, the Trip Planner, Bluetooth battery reading (still BETA) with Energy History, drive detection, and backup. The three-minute Planned Charge preview is the honest way to try the difference before paying.

Know the app, then go camping

Solar Spotter is free to try, and Pro is a one-off purchase — no subscription, and your data stays on your phone.

Zero data collection · Your data stays on your phone