Panels Out or Packed: Why the App Asks
An app that credits you with sun you never collected is lying to you politely. A folding panel spends half its life rolled up in the back — so Solar Spotter asks, one tap, and the day’s numbers describe your rig instead of an imaginary one.
An assumption the app stopped making
Before this, the app credited a portable panel with generating from the moment the sun cleared the horizon — every day, on no evidence at all. If your blanket stayed packed, every figure downstream of that assumption was quietly wrong: harvest it never made, an overnight outlook cushioned by charge that never arrived.
Now the app asks. A panel you have declared packed reads 0 W and puts nothing into the day’s sums. On a rig where everything packs away, declaring the lot packed takes the remaining-charge-today figure with it and leaves the battery outlook draining with no solar in it — which is exactly what your evening looks like with nothing out. A rig with a fixed panel in it keeps that figure, because the fixed panel is still working. Declare them out and every number returns.
All of this lives on the main screen’s panel card, which is part of Solar Spotter Pro — as is Your Gear, where panels are saved in the first place. Without a saved panel there is nothing to declare, so the question never appears.
One row per panel, one question a day
The control lives under each portable panel’s name on the main screen — one row per panel, so a rig running a blanket and a folding panel declares them separately. A panel bolted to the roof gets no row: it is installed, not deployed. The row always says what tapping it does: Panels out · tap when you pack up, or Panels packed · Panels now in place.
Before you have ever answered for that panel there is no status half at all — the row is simply Panels now in place, waiting. Never-stated and packed are different things to the app, and it will not put words in your mouth about which one you meant.
Each morning the app also asks once — Are your panels out?, with Solar only counts while they’re out. underneath and two answers, THEY’RE OUT or NOT YET. That card speaks for every portable panel at once; the rows are how you correct it afterwards. It is a reminder, never an alert: no notification fires, and none ever will.
NOT YET is an answer and is recorded as one — declining tells the app something real, which is why it is a button and not a dismiss. And the rows are there day and night, so packing up after dark is never locked out.
“Out” lapses. “Packed” does not.
Saying “out” in the morning does not mean “out until further notice.” That declaration ends at sunset — there is nothing left for a panel to collect — and overnight in any case, so each morning starts with the question open again. Without a position fix the app cannot know when sunset was, and only the overnight reset applies.
Where the sun never sets, the overnight reset is the only one, and it is the right one on its own terms: a panel positioned for yesterday afternoon is facing the wrong part of the sky by the small hours, so you have to go out and re-position it anyway. Being asked again is the app asking about a genuinely different setup.
A “packed” declaration does not lapse. That asymmetry is deliberate. The app never assumes your panels are out, so yesterday’s “they’re out” cannot speak for this morning — but “they’re packed” needs no renewal, because it is the state the app falls back to anyway, and expiring it would only ask you to keep re-asserting a negative.
The one thing worth remembering: if you packed up yesterday and put the panels out again today, tap the row. Until you do, that panel’s sun stays out of the sums — and the app is not going to guess on your behalf.
Within a day it works by the moment, not by the whole of it. Pack up at four and the record keeps everything the panels earned before four; solar credit stops from the tap onwards. Nothing you actually harvested is thrown away.
Ticking and declaring are not the same thing
Two different questions live on two different screens. The tick in Your Gear says which panels are in the rig you are running — the main screen forecasts only what is ticked, so two alternative setups never add up into one impossible number, and two panels genuinely out together are summed. The packed/out row says whether that panel is out right now.
So when you pack up, tap the row — don’t untick the panel. Unticking takes the panel out of your rig entirely: its declaration row goes with it, the day stops being attributed to that setup, and charge arriving from a charger or the alternator loses the row that exists to show it. Declaring packed keeps all of that working and simply stops crediting sun.
Untick everything and the main screen says so plainly — No panels ticked, with a tap through to Your Gear — because with no rig ticked there is nothing to forecast from at all.
Who gets asked — and how to quiet it
Any rig carrying at least one panel that packs away. A caravan with a bonded roof panel and a suitcase in the boot gets asked about the suitcase; the roof panel keeps generating whenever the sun is up and is never asked about. A rig where everything is fixed is never asked at all.
The app works that out from the panel type you chose in Your Gear. Rigid · portable and Blanket · portable are declared daily; Rigid · fixed and Flexible · fixed never are. If you have a flexible panel bonded to a roof, set it to Flexible · fixed and the daily ask stops. Until you do the app under-promises, which is the safe way round.
If the morning ask isn’t for you, silence it — inline on the card the first time it appears (Don’t ask daily), or any time under Settings → Solar Panels (Daily panel check). Silencing removes the reminder, never the requirement: Solar only counts while your panels are out, and the rows on the main screen are always there to say so.
Where the answer flows
The declaration decides when solar can be credited at all. Charge above what a cloudless sky could have delivered shows on the main screen as Net alternate charge — and a packed blanket is exactly the case that row was built for, because with nothing out every watt going in is provably not sun. The full story is in the alternate-charging guide.
Driving does the same thing on its own. A portable panel is taken to be in the boot while the rig is moving, whatever you declared, so a daytime drive credits nothing to the sun — which is part of how Energy History separates the alternator’s share from the sky’s.
One label there is worth knowing. A day filed under No panels out is a day you had nothing ticked — not a day you declared packed. A declared-packed day still carries your rig’s name, still counts toward the record, and still lands in the charge-source split. How the whole chain fits together is laid out in the main-screen guide.
What it will not do
It will not guess. If you never engage with it, the app carries on exactly as before — the feature only ever acts on what you have said.
It will not nag. One card a day at most, in daylight, in the app. No notifications, ever.
It will not rewrite history. Days recorded before the feature existed keep their numbers; the honesty starts from the day you do.
And it keeps nothing about where you were. What you declare is a yes or a no and the time you said it, held on your phone — no coordinate goes into it, and it does not leave the device.
Common questions
What does declaring actually change?
The numbers, not a label. A panel declared packed reads 0 W and puts nothing into the day’s sums. On a rig where everything packs away, declaring the lot packed takes the remaining-charge figure with it and the overnight outlook drains without a solar term; a rig with a fixed panel in it keeps that figure, because the fixed panel is still working. Declare them out and every number returns.
What if I never answer?
Then nothing changes — the app carries on exactly as it always has. The bargain starts the first time you do answer: from then on, each day’s solar counts once you’ve said the panels are out. You control both ends of that, and the app never chases you over it.
Will it send me a notification?
No, never. The question is a card waiting when you next open the app in daylight — it is on you to say, not on the app to interrupt your day. Silencing the ask removes the reminder, not the requirement: the rows on the main screen are always there.
I have roof-mounted panels. Why don’t I see any of this?
Because a fixed panel is installed, not deployed — it is out whenever the sun is, so there is nothing to ask. The question only exists for panels that get packed away to travel. A mixed rig does get asked, but only about its portable half: a bonded roof panel keeps generating while the suitcase beside it is declared on its own row.
I packed up mid-afternoon. Is the morning’s harvest lost?
No. The declaration works by the moment, not by the whole day — the record keeps everything that arrived while the panels were out, and stops crediting solar from the moment you said they were packed.
I packed up yesterday and put the panels out today. Why is the app still ignoring them?
Because a “packed” declaration does not expire, while an “out” one does. The app will never assume your panels are out, so it waits to be told again — tap the row under the panel’s name and today’s numbers come straight back. This is the one case where forgetting the tap quietly costs you credit for sun you really collected.
Should I untick the panel instead of declaring it packed?
No. The tick says which panels are in the rig you are running; the row says whether they are out today. Unticking removes the panel from the forecast altogether, takes its declaration row away with it, and hides the row that shows charge arriving from a charger or the alternator. Tap the row to pack up, and leave the tick alone.
Numbers about your actual day
The deployment declaration is part of Solar Spotter Pro — a one-off purchase, no subscription, and your data stays on your phone.
