Huck
Watts are Universal
Interesting, All different. How do you have them wired? Could you share a screenshot of Solar assistant page? Thanks
Monitor JK BMS with Solar Assistant?
- Thread starter Redbeardbeer
- Start date
Huck
Watts are Universal
Are you also using “USB to JBD RS485” or “USB to JK RS485” setting in solar assistant? Thanks for all the info!
Huck
Watts are Universal
Could be because of bad usb a to usb b wire (use the original that came with inverter, I have still heard of them being bad) or like in my case, I somehow received two bad communication boards with both my inverters. I went back to my supplier ( Ian at Watts247) and told him my findings and explanation. Out of warranty, he still supplied me with new boards free of charge and I have not had any hiccups at all. I must say it took me a year to make it happen but..
My understanding is that the boards are not common to be bad or go bad, but in my case they had made several revisions from my original boards to the new ones. My opinion is that they all know this and are just reluctant to give them away.
My boards were bad right from the start, I could never get a stable connection to the shine server. Every other day I had to reset the thing manually (unplug the dongle, wait a few minutes, cross fingers, and do it again next day!). This is what got me on the Solar Assistant kick. After purchasing the RPi direct from Watts247, receiving it, plug-in, still no work. My thought was that it was plugged directly, it would work, but no. I had chased the issue far enough and was feed up. So that’s when I had one more go with Ian and thankfully he responded telling me Growatt had just sent him new boards and he would send them out for me to try…. It worked!
Hope my little story/rant helps you!
Mind you this is just the short of the story and is not me trying to bash on Ian or Growatt, sometimes thing happen out of our control and some the length of time is partially me procrastinating and being Pee’d off.
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Well thanks for the idea but that didn't work.
Huck
Watts are Universal
Maybe time to check into those communication boards? Have you tried updating firmware on the inverter?
Now I'm starting to think it's my ras pi. One of the bms is starting to have a com problem.
Huck
Watts are Universal
Make sure you have a good power supply on the RPi. Triple check all connections!
So i checked all connections and they are good. I have found if I disconnect all but one it doesn't happen, so maybe the power draw on 4 usb devices plugged in is the problem. I am using the original 2.5 amp ras pi power supply.
Huck
Watts are Universal
SolarAssistant
) . Says 3 amp. I’m not sure what the power consumption or requirements are. I have three USB’s plugged in and works great.To add, I’m not entirely sure that micro usb is capable of more than 3 amp. So with that in mind, developers would of thought of some other power input solution if it were necessary. But I don’t know this as a fact, so check on that, or maybe someone else can chime in.
One more thing. Are you making sure you are selecting one device to read from in the drop down menu on the solar assistant settings page (“USB Ports”)?
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I'm the one that provided solar assistant with the JK BMS setup picture that's posted here. https://solar-assistant.io/help/battery/jk-bms
From my testing the USB to RS485 dongle from JK seems to be very inconsistent. I'll give the USB to TTL a try.
From my testing the USB to RS485 dongle from JK seems to be very inconsistent. I'll give the USB to TTL a try.
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Huck
Watts are Universal
The BMS you show is the newer/newest version with the heat output. Those seem to be the ones that work using the “USB to JK RS485” protocol. I would like to know how you make out using direct TTL adapter! Keep us updated please!
I have the pinout of that connector here in the readme:
GitHub - PurpleAlien/jk-bms_grafana: Read data from a JK BMS and graph it in Grafana
Read data from a JK BMS and graph it in Grafana. Contribute to PurpleAlien/jk-bms_grafana development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Works fine at 115200 Baud with a generic TTL/USB converter for use with Grafana, and should be the same with Solar Assistant. In the end I just cut out the JK RS485 converter from the equation since it just consumes power to convert TTL to RS485 to only then convert it back to USB.
I have to correct this. There is no RS485 inside the BMS. It's a TTL signal coming from the one of the micro controller UARTs. RS485 uses three pins:A, B and GND. A and B are a balanced, differential signal whereas TTL uses Rx/Tx lines and GND. Rx and Tx are receive/transmit lines and are independent, non-differential and more akin to RS-232.
Thus, the converter that they sell turns the TTL signal from the UART into an actual A/B RS-485 signal (the module contains a microcontroller etc. to do this). Then, you typically connect a RS-485 to USB converter (which turns this into a kind of RS-232 again, simplified). It's therefor much easier to just take the existing TTL signal from the UART and convert that with a TTL to USB converter.
I don't believe (unless I miss a version) that any of the BMS has RS-485 by default even through that's what @Nami indicates in the pictures of the BMS. In reality, this is a misnomer: it should be TTL, which can be converted to RS-485, but which would be easier for us if they would just provide a TTL to USB converter that plugs in there instead of going TTL -> RS485 -> TTL -> USB...
Steve_S
Offgrid Cabineer, N.E. Ontario, Canada
Ugh... sorry for my response withdrawn, being extremely sleep deprived has overly affected me.
So clearing my post.
So clearing my post.
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