Prototype solar panel IoT hardware virtually in minutes, no soldering required.
Solo energytech founders lack the skills and resources to prototype IoT hardware for solar panel monitoring without a team.
ProtoPanel provides a cloud-based simulator that emulates solar panel sensors, inverters, and microcontrollers for real-time monitoring prototypes. Solo founders can test logic, data flows, and performance without physical hardware. Deploy dashboards instantly to validate ideas with investors.
Solo founders in energytech developing IoT hardware for solar panel monitoring
Hyper-realistic physics-based solar simulation engine tuned for PV output, shading, and weather APIs—far beyond generic IoT sims.
supportive/professional
Drag-and-drop interface to assemble solar sensors, inverters, and comms modules.
Run live sims with weather data integration for accurate PV output modeling.
Auto-generate monitoring UIs with charts for voltage, current, and efficiency.
Download Arduino/ESP32 code snippets validated in sim.
Test edge cases like faults, low light, or battery drain.
Share sim links with team or investors for feedback.
Pull sim data via API for custom analysis.
Generate PDF summaries of sim results.
| Column | Type | Nullable |
|---|---|---|
| id | uuid | No |
| text | No | |
| subscription_tier | text | Yes |
| Column | Type | Nullable |
|---|---|---|
| id | uuid | No |
| user_id | uuid | No |
| name | text | No |
| created_at | timestamp | No |
Relationships:
| Column | Type | Nullable |
|---|---|---|
| id | uuid | No |
| project_id | uuid | No |
| data | jsonb | Yes |
| status | text | No |
Relationships:
/api/projectsList user projects
/api/projectsCreate new project
/api/simulationsRun simulation
/api/simulations/:idGet sim results
No exports
| Month | Users | Conversion | MRR | ARR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | 50 | 5% | $88 | $1,056 |
| Month 6 | 400 | 8% | $1,120 | $13,440 |
Simulate panels, sensors & dashboards in the cloud—validate your energytech MVP solo.
DM 20 solo energytech founders on Twitter/LinkedIn searching 'solar IoT prototype', offer free Pro access for feedback. Post in r/energytech and Indie Hackers with demo video. Attend virtual solar hackathons to pitch directly.
Easy circuit sim
No solar-specific physics
Tailored PV models & monitoring focus
ESP32 sim
Generic, no energy data
Solar-optimized with dashboards
Proprietary solar physics dataset from sim runs trains ML for better predictions, creating data moat.
Solar installs up 30% YoY, AI sim tech mature, solo founders booming post-RTC funding cuts.
Sim accuracy issues
Validate with real data feeds
Low adoption
Pre-launch waitlist
Build delays
Strict weekly milestones
High compute costs
Vercel serverless scaling
Success: 70% confirm need
Success: 80% retention
Success: 200 signups
Success: 50 organic/mo
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