After running the solar panel on the back patio for a couple of years, I wanted to do more with it. I got some additional panels for free that came off of an RV that I added to the system, the old inverter died so I replaced that with a much better inverter, and I moved the system to my shop roof and built a weather enclosure to house the system.
Today, the system lives on top of my shop, with 1 35 watt Siemens panel and two 15 watt harbor freight panels. These panels are connected to the same charge controller and charge a colletion of 7 batteries, all tied together. Additionally, I programmed an Arduino Uno to monitor the voltage and have cacti pulling the data every 5 minutes and graphing it for me so I can check the charge of the system over time.
Whats worked well - The Arduino with a network shield has worked great for me to monitor the system voltage.
What did I screw up on - Solar panel placement, I discovered the hard way that during the winter, the angle of the sun goes down, so the tree behind my shop causes shade on the panels during mid day during the winter, causing almost no output from the panels.
Also, using the Arduino monitor I can tell you the months from October until about Febuarary, the solar output out of the panels is almost zero due to foggy/overcast days, shortness of daylight, and the tree behind the shop.
Need to get some graphs and pictures on this page