Operator: HydroComplete LLC. Effective October 5, 2026
With your explicit consent through Ring's account linking, Yard Sun Map collects still-image snapshots from your Ring cameras, about every 10 minutes during daylight, plus each camera's name. At linking you also give us your email address and your ZIP code. We use these for one purpose: to show you which parts of the scene your camera sees get direct sun, and for how long, and, if you ask, to estimate solar output for squares you pick. We do not collect live video, audio, motion-event recordings, or biometric data, and we do not identify people, vehicles, animals or objects.
Each snapshot is shrunk to a 48 by 27 grid of brightness values the moment it arrives. The top quarter, where Ring prints its label on every image, is never analysed. A fixed, rule-based procedure then compares each square's brightness with the rest of the same picture and with that square's own colour seen in light without shadows, and marks squares in direct sun. The sun's position comes from a standard astronomical calculation for the centre of your ZIP code, done on our own server. The solar estimate uses a published clear-sky model (Bird and Hulstrom, 1981) and is always labelled as an estimate: Yard Sun Map does not read any solar panel, inverter or meter.
Your email identifies your account and is used only to contact you about it. Your ZIP code is converted, on our own server, to the centre of its Census area (rounded to about 1 km) and used only to calculate where the sun is. Neither is sent to anyone.
Yard Sun Map does not use artificial intelligence, machine learning, or neural networks. Sun and shade are found by the fixed rules described above (brightness comparisons and a standard thresholding method); the only thing that adapts is a running average of each square's colour. No system learns or trains from your data, and your data is never used to train any model, ours or anyone else's.
We do not sell, share, or disclose your images, map, or account information to any third party for their own purposes. Your map is visible only to you, through your private link. Yard Sun Map runs on Fly.io, Inc. (cloud hosting, United States), which stores data on our behalf as an infrastructure sub-processor and does not use it for anything else. Yard Sun Map calls no outside data service: the sun calculation, the clear-sky model and the ZIP-code table all run on our own server.
Deletion is automatic and self-service. Delete my account and data on your map page immediately and permanently removes everything above, for every camera you have connected. Removing Yard Sun Map from your Ring app does the same automatically. You may also request deletion, or a copy of your data, by email (below); we respond within 30 days.
Analysis is fully automated. No person, including the developer, views your snapshots or map in routine operation. A human looks at your data only if you ask for support on your account or for a copy of your data, and only to fulfil that request.
Nothing is collected until you complete Ring's account-linking consent. You can mark squares of the picture "not my yard" so they are left out of the analysis, stop all collection by removing Yard Sun Map in the Ring app, and remove all stored data with the delete control. There is no advertising, data sale or AI training to opt out of: those uses do not happen.
Everything Yard Sun Map derives for you is on your map page: the sun map for each month, the latest snapshot, and what the camera did most recently. Your original Ring recordings stay in your Ring account, under Ring's controls, untouched by Yard Sun Map.
If we ever change how images are analysed, we will update this page with a new date and show a notice on your map page before the change takes effect.
Access to your Ring account uses Ring's account-linking system; Yard Sun Map never sees your Ring password. Data travels over HTTPS and is stored on access-controlled, encrypted infrastructure.
Questions, data requests or deletion requests: michaelbflynn@gmail.com