Getting More From Your Setup

The Main Screen, Explained Top to Bottom

Welcome to Solar Spotter. It works out how to position your panels, how much they will make today, and whether your battery will see you through the night — for your own gear, wherever you happen to be parked.

This guide walks down the main screen in the order it appears and explains every part of it:

what each section shows
where its numbers come from
how to read a section as a whole
what it actually gets you

Read it once, open the app, and you will know what everything is.

1. The Solar Compass

The Solar Compass at the top shows you how to position your panels for your location, using solar positioning and bearings. The yellow arrow is the sun's position right now. The red arrow on the inner circle is your device's live bearing. To set up for now, rotate until the red arrow lines up with the yellow one.

Lining up with the sun works — but only for right now. The sun crosses the sky about 15° every hour, and the further it moves from where your panel points, the less your panel makes. To get the most charge, set up for the whole time you plan to charge, not just this moment.

That is what the coloured time bands around the compass are for: they show the sun's movement over your selected timeframe.

Free gets a 3 hr and a 6 hr charging window.
Pro adds the green planned charging band, set three ways:
- a duration from now (say 4 hr)
- a custom window (say 8am–3pm)
- today's rolling Best Charging Window (BCW)

Why the bearing isn't just the middle of your window: time spent charging around the solar-noon hours on a clear day produces more charge than the same time elsewhere in the day. So the optimal bearing for a selected charge time is a weighted average, taking in both solar position and solar strength.

The red arrow always shows the direction your device is facing. To set up for a charge window, rotate until it lines up with that window's optimal bearing — the small triangle on its band, also listed as a number under the compass. When it lines up, the red arrow takes the colour of that band and displays a 3, 6 or P for planned.

The number in the middle of the compass is the optimal tilt angle — the angle above horizontal, perpendicular to the sun, to stand your panels at. It is a live reading: as you rotate to a bearing, the tilt moves to match it — and when you align to a timeframe's optimal bearing, the tilt reading takes the band's colour too, to make setting up easy.

What it gets you: a panel set properly, without guesswork or solar charts to extrapolate from — and a bearing and tilt angle that maximise the whole time your panels are deployed, not just where the sun is right now.

Go deeper: setting up a solar blanket · using Panel Mode and AR to set it

2. Solar Day and the Best Charging Window

The Solar Day rates the rest of today, from now until sunset — Excellent, Good, Moderate or Poor — with a rolling bar showing how much daylight is left, a trend (improving, steady or fading), and a warning when there is rain about. If hail, a thunderstorm or damaging wind is on the way, that becomes a red warning to pack the panels away.

With Pro, the free solar bar becomes the Best Charging Window — the hours today when you can get the most charging done, using local weather to work out the actual light arriving at your spot rather than a generic sunrise-to-sunset guess. That window is the one the compass bearings and the AR modes target when you pick BCW in planned charge.

What it gets you: a one-glance answer to "what's today looking like for solar?" — and, on Pro, exactly which hours to set up for, so the blanket goes out for the best window and not into that unexpected afternoon storm.

Go deeper: the best charging window explained

3. Solar conditions — the sky rating and the W/m²

The gauge shows a sky rating as a percentage. That is how much of the available light is actually reaching the ground, after cloud and rain have taken their cut. On a clear day it sits high; under heavy cloud or an overcast day it drops down a long way. Beside it, shade risk combines cloud cover with the chance of rain.

Under the sky rating, the W/m² figure is the actual irradiance — the power of the sunlight landing on each square metre.

That W/m² number is the important one. It is what grades the rest of the day, what grades the light right now, and what the output estimate multiplies your panels against.

What the W/m² figures mean

500+ — Excellent: strong, clear-sky charging.
300–500 — Good: solid charging, most of your capacity in use.
150–300 — Moderate: cloud or a low sun angle.
Under 150 — Poor: minimal charging, heavy cloud or dawn and dusk.

The forecast strip underneath — three-hour steps on free, hourly with Pro — shows the rolling outlook for the day.

What it gets you: the honest strength of the light reaching your panels — a true read on charging ability. For your location. In your season. No matter where you are.

Go deeper: how shade affects a panel · charging in winter

4. Charging status — how it looks right now

Under the conditions gauge sits a second verdict: Peak, Strong, Moderate or Low Solar Window. This one is about this moment, not the day — and it sits below the hourly strip on purpose, so the "right now" reading has its context directly above it.

Solar Day and the charging status can disagree, and that is not a fault. Solar Day grades an average across the daylight still to come. The charging status grades the light arriving right now. A poor day can hold a good hour, and a bright day can go dark for twenty minutes when a cloud bank rolls through.

If the two ever seem to contradict each other, check what each one is a statement about — the rest of the day, or the instant. They use the same scale, so a given reading always means the same thing on both.

What it gets you: whether right now is a good moment to put the panels out, or worth waiting twenty minutes for the cloud to clear.

Go deeper: why charging drops off on cloudy days

5. Estimated output — what your own kit will doPro

This section is about your gear — your panels, your battery, your camp loads — so it comes to life once those are entered.

The panel rows, and the rig badge

Each panel you have ticked shows what it is making right now in watts, and what that adds to your battery as a percentage per hour. The percentage is always against your battery bank, which is why two people with identical panels see different figures. If you have named a rig — the tourer, the camper trailer — its badge sits here so you can see at a glance which setup the numbers describe.

Anything in Your Gear can be switched off, and back on with one tap — a battery, a camp gear set, or a whole rig. Fridge out for a service? Tap its set, confirm, and it is off; tap it again when it is back, with nothing to re-enter.

While a battery is off, its percentage rows are replaced by one amber Select a battery row. While camp gear is off, Daily draw reads Select camp gear — unless your battery's Bluetooth is measuring the draw, in which case the measured figure stays. Both take you straight to the right part of Your Gear.

Panels out, or packed — Panels out / Panels packed

Under each portable panel's row sits a one-tap declaration for that panel: is it actually out right now? While it is out the row reads Panels out · tap when you pack up. Tap it when you put that panel away: the row flips to Panels packed and drops to 0 W, the Combined line and the overnight outlook stop counting charge that is not coming in from it. Tap Panels now in place when it is out again and that panel fires back up.

A fixed roof panel has no packed or out row — it is always out, and always counts, so a roof-plus-suitcase rig keeps the roof's charge while the suitcase sits in the boot.

Two ways to get there. The first time you open the app after sunrise each day it asks once for the whole rig — Are your panels out? THEY'RE OUT declares every portable panel out at once, NOT YET declares them all packed — then you edit per panel on the rows underneath, so the blanket can stay out while the suitcase comes in. If you have switched the daily ask off in Settings, the per-panel rows are the whole control: tap the one under the panel you have just put out or packed away.

Packing away and setting up is part of using a portable panel — it is not a change to your setup. The declaration changes today's maths, not your setup — your recorded history stays credited to the same rig. It lasts for the day: after sunset it lapses, and the next day your panels count as packed until you say they are out again. (Un-ticking a panel is the different move: that says the panel is no longer part of the rig at all.)

Today's projections

Current battery charge — where you are now. Tap to update it, or pair your battery's Bluetooth monitor and it fills itself in from the battery's own numbers.
Net alternate charge — appears when the battery is taking in more than a cloudless sky could push through your panels. That surplus cannot be solar, so something else is doing it: the DC-DC on a drive, a generator, a powered site. It reads net of whatever camp gear is drawing at the same moment, so it only ever understates. When the live readings stop, it drops off — it is a right-now row, not a record.
Remaining charge today — the harvest still to come before sunset, for panels that are out.
Daily draw — what your camp uses in a day. The line underneath says where the number came from: measured from your battery's own readings when it can be, your entered figure when not. Tap the row to change it.
Battery to full, Battery by sunset or Battery dropping — whether you are gaining or losing, how fast, and where you will land by sunset.
Battery at sunrise+2hrs — the overnight verdict. It is measured against a safe floor for your battery's type, not against empty: dropping below that floor now and then is fine, but doing it every night is what wears a battery out early.

Why sunrise plus two hours, and not sunrise? The first hour or two after the sun comes up is nearly worthless for charging — the sun is low and the light has a lot of atmosphere to get through. Reporting the low point at sunrise would flatter your setup. Sunrise+2hrs is the real bottom of the night.

After dark: Overnight Reserve

Once the sun is down the daytime projections stand aside and this section becomes Overnight Reserve — the same battery, alternate-charge and daily-draw rows, plus the sunrise verdict. That matters because after dark is exactly when a generator or a powered site connection is most likely needed, and when "will the morning be comfortable" is the question you are actually asking. The app tells you in advance, so you can get the generator out early if need be — and not be charging while everyone is trying to sleep!

What it gets you: real figures for your panels and your battery, instead of the rated numbers on the box — including the what's-left-by-morning verdict, so you can run the fridge, the CPAP and the heater without second-guessing them all night.

Go deeper: why a panel makes less than its rating · how many watts you need · how long a battery takes to charge · will your battery last the night

6. Reading the section as a whole

The output section is more than a stack of rows — it is one story, and each control plays a different part in it:

Your gear list says what the rig is. The panels you tick are the rig's panels — that is an identity, not a daily action.
The packed-or-out row says what is happening right now. Pack up the panels, tap once, and today's maths follows — while your history keeps belonging to the same rig.
Bluetooth is where the real numbers come from. With your battery's monitor paired, charge and draw are measured rather than estimated, and everything downstream sharpens.
Charge gets credited to whatever earned it. Anything above what a cloudless sky could deliver shows as alternate charge, never solar. While you are driving, a portable panel is taken to be packed in the boot, so the DC-DC's charge is not credited to it. The app notices the drive from your changing position without ever recording where you went, and switching on drive detection sharpens that.
Energy History writes it all down — day by day, filed under the setup that was running (see section 9).

What it gets you: numbers you can act on around the campsite — because the app knows what is out, what is charging, and what earned what, instead of assuming.

7. Location, sun times and the sun path

The location panel shows the coordinates the whole page is working from. Everything above it — sun position, day length, the optimal bearing — is derived from that point and the current date, which is why the app works the same at 65° north in January as it does at 40° south.

Sun times give you sunrise, sunset and solar noon. The sun path chart draws the arc for the day, so you can see how high the sun actually gets. In midwinter at high latitude, that arc explains more about your charging than any other number on the page.

What it gets you: everything above works from your actual position and today's date, so the app is just as correct in a Scottish winter as it is in a Queensland, Australia summer.

Go deeper: what winter does to your charging

8. Tomorrow, and your trip

Below today sits the look ahead, so you know what the coming days are likely to have in store.

Free gets the tomorrow card, which grades the next day — Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor — on the same cut-offs as today.
Pro gets the 3-Day Outlook instead: the next three days side by side. Tap on a day to see it in more detail.
On Pro with a trip running, the trip's card appears here with the day you are up to. Tap it to open the detailed trip planner.

What it gets you: a heads up for tomorrow, with enough warning to change what you do later today and into tonight — run the fridge colder now, or hold off on the inverter until the sun is back.

Go deeper: the 3-Day Outlook explained · planning a trip stop by stop · getting the maximum out of your setup

9. Energy History — what your rig actually didPro

Once the app has recorded seven days of your battery over Bluetooth — they need not be in a row — a new door appears at the bottom of the screen: Energy History. It opens onto the record — day by day, what your setup actually harvested and actually drew, filed under the setup that was running, with a divider wherever the setup changed.

It is honest about its own limits. A day the app only partly watched says so on its own row — battery connected 16h of 24, or readings in 9 of 24 hours for a day of check-ins — and shows rates for the hours it saw rather than pretending to know the whole day. The averages at the top work the same way: a rate for the connected hours while the record is young, then a true per-day average once enough full days are in.

A day when the panels were packed, or you were topping up from the car, is still recorded — it just sits out of any judgement about how your panels are performing, because there is no telling what they did that day.

Run more than one rig and the history opens on the one you're running, lit green at the top. Tap the rig's name to pick another and read its days, or All rigs for the whole record. Swap batteries for an hour to test something and that hour is filed under the setup you were actually running, with a one-line note on the day — nothing lost, nothing mixed.

The best way to use it: connect to your battery over Bluetooth at least once in the morning, and again in the afternoon or evening. The history reads the change in charge and draw across each period between connections — so whether you stay connected for hours or just a few minutes here and there, you get a read on your actual usage, day by day.

There is no countdown and no nagging — the door simply appears when there is enough recorded to be worth opening. It needs your battery's Bluetooth monitor paired; a typed percentage records nothing.

And if your battery won't pair, don't let it fail silently: Report a Bluetooth issue in the app opens an email with the exact diagnostics already filled in, ready for you to send, so a reply can land straight back with you — and telling us your setup at solarspotter.app/bt is how batteries get added to the supported list.

What it gets you: the end of guessing what your rig can do. After a week at camp you are reading your own history, not an estimate — and every other number on this screen gets sharper because of it.

Common questions

Why does the charging status say one thing and Solar Day another?

Because they answer different questions. Solar Day is an average across the daylight still to come; the charging status is what's happening right now. Both use the same scale, so the same reading always means the same thing — they are just describing different spans of time.

Why is my sky rating low when it looks bright outside?

Eyes are poor light meters — they adjust so well that a heavily overcast day still looks usable. Thick cloud can cut the light reaching your panels by three quarters or more, and the sky rating is reporting that honestly rather than flattering the sky.

Why do my panels show fewer watts than they are rated for?

A panel's rating is measured in laboratory conditions — full sun, straight on, cool. Real sun is weaker, real panels are rarely set perfectly, and heat reduces output. Seeing less than the sticker is normal, and the app shows you the real figure rather than the sticker.

Some sections are empty. What am I missing?

The sky sections work for everyone with a location. The output section is part of Pro and needs your panels and battery entered before it can say anything about your setup, because it is about your gear rather than the weather. With a battery or camp gear saved but no panel yet, the battery and draw rows still show, with a gold pill to add a panel. Energy History appears on its own once enough days have been recorded.

What's the difference between un-ticking a panel and marking it packed?

They answer different questions. The tick says which rig your panel is part of — un-tick it and it leaves the setup, which your history records as a change of rig. "Panels packed" says what the panels are doing right now — deployed and bringing in charge, or packed away. Stowing a portable panel for a drive is part of its daily use: it changes today's numbers and never touches which rig your history belongs to. Day to day, the packed/out row is the one to keep matched to what you are doing.

Why has a "Net alternate charge" row appeared under my battery?

Because the battery is taking in more than a cloudless sky could push through your panels — so something other than solar is charging it: the DC-DC while the engine runs, a generator, a powered site. The figure is net of whatever camp gear is drawing at the same time, so the real input is at least that much. It drops off when the live readings stop, because it only ever describes what's happening right now.

Does the app send my location anywhere?

Your position is used to work out where the sun is, on your device. The only time a location leaves your device is the weather request for the place being forecast, which is needed to get a forecast at all and is not stored. Nothing about you is kept, and there is no account. At Solar Spotter we're not interested in your data — we're only interested in keeping the beers cold and you enjoying the outdoors for longer!

Know what your setup will actually do

Free to download — Pro gives you real numbers for your own panels and your own battery, wherever you're parked.