Support

Common questions

The compass will not settle, or the bearing looks wrong. Steel, rebar, magnets and speakers all bend the Earth’s magnetic field. Stand a metre or two clear of the mounting hardware, take the phone out of a magnetic case, and tap Recalibrate on the Aim screen. Sun Catcher watches the field strength and warns you when it is outside the range the Earth produces, so if that warning is showing, move before you trust the reading.

Nothing appears on the Aim screen at all. Aiming needs a magnetometer. A few tablets and a handful of budget handsets do not have one. Everything else in the app still works — you can enter the panel angle by hand and get the full report.

It will not find my location. Sun Catcher asks for location permission because latitude decides the tilt and the hemisphere decides the direction; without a position there is nothing to compute. If you would rather not grant it, type the coordinates in by hand on the Site sheet and the whole app works as normal.

Why is the recommended angle not simply my latitude? Because that rule is an approximation, and Sun Catcher does the actual sum. The optimum sits below your latitude almost everywhere, and the gap widens as you go toward the poles: winter sun at a high latitude arrives through so much atmosphere that it is not worth tilting to catch. The Report screen shows you what the rule would have said and what it would have cost.

How accurate are the energy figures? They are clear-sky figures, which is why the app talks in percentages of the best achievable aim rather than promising kilowatt-hours. Clouds, haze, panel temperature and dirt all scale a system nearly equally, so they barely move the best angle — which is the question Sun Catcher answers. For a yield forecast in kilowatt-hours, take the angles it gives you to a tool built on measured weather history.

Does it need a signal? No. Everything is computed on the phone, including the magnetic declination. Once installed it works down a field with no bars.

Get in touch

Email support@suncatcher.app. It helps to include your phone model and roughly where you were standing.