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Reelscope

Daniel Frenkel edited this page Jul 6, 2026 · 4 revisions

Reelscope (Fishing)

Your Valar Scope can also run as a fishing‑conditions console for your water — covering both freshwater and saltwater, all from free, keyless public feeds. Its hero is an on‑device solunar "best bite times" band: the round screen becomes a 24‑hour dial marking the day's major and minor feeding windows, worked out from the Sun and Moon for your exact location with no network at all. On top of that it layers the live numbers anglers actually watch — river gauge or tide state, water temperature, and the barometric trend.

It's a separate firmware build for the same Valar Scopes hardware: flash the Reelscope firmware and the device boots into the fishing console instead of the radar. Everything else you already know carries over — Wi‑Fi setup, the web config page, persistent storage, over‑the‑air updates, and ntfy alerts. The solunar bite forecast at its core is fully on‑device and works the moment you set a location, and the live tide, river, water‑temperature, and weather screens light up as soon as you point it at a station.

Where the data comes from. The bite windows, Moon phase, and sunrise/sunset are computed on‑device from the NTP clock and your configured location (an internal low‑precision sun/moon almanac), so they need no feed at all. The live screens pull from free, keyless public sources: freshwater gauges from USGS Water Services (keyed by your gauge's site number); saltwater tides and water temperature from NOAA CO‑OPS tide stations, with offshore waves from NDBC buoys; and weather / barometer from Open‑Meteo. There is no backend, no account, and no API key — nothing is baked in and nothing is required. It polls gently — one request in flight at a time, each feed on its own timer with exponential backoff — and keeps the last good reading through a network hiccup.

🖥️ The screens

Reelscope uses the hybrid shell (like Quillscope): the enabled dials auto‑rotate on a dwell timer (skipping any feed with no data yet), and you can also swipe left/right by hand. Tap any dial to inspect it in a detail card. There's no PPI sweep — the bite dial is a static 24‑hour ring. Every screen can be toggled on or off in config, so a freshwater angler and a saltwater angler each see only what's relevant.

Screen What it shows
🎣 Solunar (the hero) A 24‑hour band (local midnight at the left) marking the day's major and minor feeding windows — worked out from the Moon's rise, set, and overhead/underfoot transits blended with sunrise/sunset — with a day rating (0–4 dots), a "now" marker, and a countdown to the next window. Tap it for the day's window list.
🌊 Tide (saltwater) The local tide state from your NOAA CO‑OPS station — RISING or FALLING, the next high or low with a countdown, and its height and time. Tap for the upcoming tide schedule. (Hidden unless a tide station is set.)
🏞️ River flow (freshwater) Your gauge's streamflow (CFS) as the big number with a rising / steady / falling trend arrow, plus gauge height, water temperature, and turbidity where the site reports it — from your chosen USGS site number. (Hidden unless a USGS gauge is set.)
🌡️ Water temp The best available water temperature — from your USGS gauge, NOAA station, or NDBC buoy — with a strike‑zone read against the active‑feeding band you set (and which source it came from).
🌦️ Weather The barometric pressure (hPa) and its trend as the headline — the number anglers watch, since a fast drop ahead of a front often turns the bite on — plus wind speed and direction, air temperature, recent rain, and, when a buoy is set, offshore wave height / swell period.
🌙 Moon The Moon phase and percent illumination that drive the solunar strength — a full or new Moon sharpens the majors — with moonrise and moonset times.
📓 Catch log Your logged catches, kept across reboots in their own storage — a lifetime total, today's count, your best day, a fishing‑day streak, and the share of catches landed during a bite window. Tap to log a catch the moment you land one.
✨ Splash / 🕑 Clock A welcome card on cold start (with a setup hint until a location is set), and an idle clock (in your configured UTC offset) that honours the night auto‑dim.

🚨 Alerts

Reelscope can push phone notifications via ntfy (see Alerts and Watchlist for how ntfy works). Set a topic and pick which triggers fire — each independently toggleable, and all edge‑seeded at boot so a condition already true at startup never pings you, only fresh events:

  • Bite window opening — a major feeding window is starting, so you can be on the water for it.
  • River flow threshold — your gauge's streamflow crosses a level you set (fishable / blown‑out), for freshwater anglers.
  • Water temperature band — the water enters your species' active‑feeding temperature range.
  • Tide turning — a high or low tide is about 30 minutes away at your station, so you can be ready for the moving water.
  • Barometer falling fast — pressure is dropping ahead of a front, the drop that often turns the bite on.

On boards with a speaker, an optional chime can sound alongside any of these. Leave the topic blank to disable all phone alerts (the chime is independent).

⚙️ Configuration

Everything is set from the same web page as the radar — Configuration Reference explains how to open it. The Reelscope build's page offers:

Setting Description
Location Latitude / longitude — the basis for the solunar windows, the Moon phase and rise/set, the keyless weather feed, and the day/night auto‑dim. Required before the bite forecast runs.
Water type Both, freshwater‑only, or saltwater‑only — a fresh‑only or salt‑only device skips the other family's feeds entirely.
Freshwater (USGS) A USGS Water Services site number for the river‑flow screen and its flow alert (leave blank for salt‑only).
Saltwater (NOAA) A NOAA CO‑OPS tide station and an optional NDBC buoy id for the tide, water‑temperature, and swell readouts (leave blank for fresh‑only).
Views A checkbox grid — Tide, Flow, Water temp, Solunar, Weather, Moon, Catch log, Clock — for which dials appear in the rotation. (A checked view still only shows once its feed has data.)
Units Imperial (ft, °F, mph, inHg) or metric (m, °C, km/h, hPa). The CFS and water‑temp alert thresholds are in your chosen units — re‑enter them if you switch.
Alerts (ntfy) Phone‑alert topic plus per‑trigger toggles: bite window opening, river flow crossing a CFS threshold, water temperature entering a °F band, a tide ~30 min away, and a fast barometric drop — plus a chime‑on‑alert toggle for boards with a speaker. Blank topic = all phone alerts off.
Display Auto‑dim at night, a UTC offset (hours) for the clock and day boundaries, and a backlight brightness slider.
Advanced An optional aggregator base URL — leave it blank and the device pulls straight from the public USGS / NOAA / Open‑Meteo APIs.

Changes apply live on Save, with no reboot — same as the radar.

⬆️ Getting it & updates

Reelscope is its own firmware image on its own update channel, so a device set up as Reelscope only ever pulls Reelscope firmware (and a radar device only pulls radar firmware) — the products never cross. Over‑the‑air updates otherwise work exactly as on the radar; see Firmware Updates.

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