Welcome to Insolation®!

Insolation AR is an app to help you visualize and understand natural light and shade in and around the home and garden. The app uses augmented reality (AR) to help you 'see the light' as you view your current home or your next. This user guide will show you how to get the most out of the app.

What does Insolation do?

Three major things:

• Sun position/path: how does the sun move through the sky across the year?
• Insolation estimates: how powerful is the sunlight falling on flat ground, a vertical wall, or a tilted surface?
• Shade visualization: will the sun be obstructed by buildings or trees at a particular time of day?

Knowing the sun's path through the sky helps you see at a glance when you'll get sunlight through a window, onto a porch, or on a garden. Knowing the power of the sunlight gives you a sense of how hot or warm a room or flower bed may get through the year due to direct light. Being able to visualize when you will be in shade helps you plan your home's layout, furnishing, and garden.

You might be wondering though - what exactly is 'insolation'? This article gives you the full picture: What is 'insolation'?

The insolation charts show you how much sunlight you can expect both on the ground and for walls/windows that face in specific directions - and they update dynamically as you move your device around.

Using AR

Augmented Reality overlays information onto your device's camera feed. As such, it is primarily intended to be used when you are 'on site', i.e. at the house or property of interest.

When you first use the app, you will be asked to give it permission to use your device's location and the camera. The location is required to calculate the position of the sun and the insolation values - those are specific to where you are. The camera permission is required in order to use AR.

Once you've granted permissions, the app will automatically start your camera feed and display information about the sun at your location.

See below for more information on how to calibrate your device

AR Controls

A row of controls is shown at the bottom of the visible camera feed area:

From left to right, these are:

• Pause/resume AR: pauses or resumes the AR session - useful if you want to show a specific view to someone else (e.g. looking out of a window). See Pausing AR.
• Ground/Front/Back: indicates whether insolation is shown for the ground, the back, or the front of the device
• Ground (G): select to show ground insolation (i.e. on a flat, horizontal surface)
• Wall (W): select to shown insolation on a horizontal wall. Think of your device as being the wall (or window) - if you're facing southwest and insolation is shown for the back of the device, then this is equivalent to the sun reaching a southwest facing window
• Snap (S): select to have the app automatically snap to ground or wall when you hold your device near flat or upright
• Continuous (C): select to calculate insolation on a tilted surface. The direction and tilt are determined by the orientation of your device - it acts like a virtual light meter as you move it around.
• Lock Orientation: locks the current orientation of your device. Tap again to unlock. Useful if you want to view insolation data for a particular tilted surface orientation, but holding the device there is awkward, or if you want to view the map
• Calibrate: we highly recommend you calibrate your device frequently to ensure accurate results. See Calibration for details.

AR Display

When you hold your device towards different areas of the sky, the camera feed is overlaid with information about the the sun's position at different times of day or times of the year. Exactly what is shown depends on how you have the Chartconfigured: you will see the sun's position for the selected date and time, plus one of a path, band, or slice. Details about what is shown can be found in Sun Positions, Paths, Bands, and Slices.

Sun pointer

The orange 3D arrow near the center of the AR display always points to the virtual sun in the sky. Follow the arrow to find the virtual sun. If you adjust the selected time of day (see instructions for the hourly insolation chart), the arrow will move as the sun position updates.

Bearing and Pitch Gauges

The AR display includes two gauges which show you information about the orientation (attitude) of your device. The bearing is shown at the top of the screen: this is simply the compass direction in which the rear-facing camera is pointed (N/S/E/W).

The gauge at the left shows the pitch of the device. When the device is exactly vertical, pitch is 0°; when placed flat on its back, the pitch is -90°. If you want to measure insolation on a vertical wall, while Snap or Continuous mode is selected, you would hold your device in a vertical position.

Pausing AR

You can pause the AR session at any time. This is useful in a number of situations:

• You want to show a particular view to someone else, for example, how the sun passes across a window. Sometimes it's hard for two people to see the screen when the device is pointed in a particular direction. You can pause AR to freeze the view and still be able to adjust the selected date or chart display while physically moving your device somewhere more convenient
• If you want to capture a screenshot, consider pausing AR first. This lets you fine tune other aspects of the user interface without having to 'hold a pose'. (It also avoids an occasional issue where capturing the screenshot can throw off the compass momentarily as the processors do their work.)

Calibration

Insolation AR relies on your device's magnetic compass to show the position of the sun correctly. The earth's magnetic field is weak and the magnetometer chip in your device is surrounded by other electronics, making compass readings somewhat prone to error.

For this reason it is important to take a moment to calibrate the app before relying on the AR readings.

Insolation includes a guided calibration process to help you check your device's compass readings. It takes only a moment and, once you are familiar with it, can be completed in seconds. The process is as follows:

1. Tap the calibration button to start the process.
2. If you're able to see the sun, check if the 'virtual' sun position displayed on screen in the app aligns to what you see through the camera. Be careful not to look directly at the sun, and avoid leaving your device's camera pointing at the sun for longer than necessary to check the alignment. If yes, then all's well - tap Yes and you're done
3. If things don't line up, then the next step is to recalibrate the compass by moving your device around in a figure-of-eight motion for 10-20 seconds
4. Once done, recheck the alignment. Still not good? You can adjust the alignment manually by swiping right or left on the screen to align the onscreen sun to the actual sun
5. If the sun is not visible due to clouds, obstructions or time of day, then you can check the map alignment instead. Point the camera towards the floor to see the floating map, and verify that the map orientation matches your surroundings. Re-calibrate the compass or align manually (swipe left or right) as needed.