Sol-ark + batrium canbus integration workaround until its supported

audreez · Oct 11, 2021

as the title says i played around with integrating sol-ark with batrium because it was raining and i'm tired of waiting for official support, i played with batrium pylontech and some other emulators but they didnt work very well or at all, eventually i set it to "project lychee" protocol that emulates LG-Chem resu protocol and sol-ark understands it all just doesn't seem send data back in a fashion that batrium understands. On sol-ark set to lithium 00, I made multiple tests by changing charging voltages/current and sol-ark obliges within seconds, soc from batrium is updated on sol-ark as well, nominal capacity doesn't seem to update after initial integration but removing the lithium integration and enabling it again updates it (or just set it in sol-ark), i have my batrium setup to long life lipo so once cells hit 3.5v soc updates to 100% and batrium sends 0 current to sol-ark, then solark redirects current back to grid within seconds (tested this few times by turning off solar letting it consume ~10 amps then turning it back on to make sure its consistent and it was)

you can use a regular cat5 network cable but only use pins 4 (solid blue - can hi),5 (blue/white can lo),6 (green ground) no resistor and wire that to watchmon (mine is wm4)

see pics and hopefully this helps someone to get by until official integrations happens (its been "in progress" for a while now)
P.S. batrium does say canbus interface is in timeout status but seems like tx/rx go up and everything works ok

solardad · Oct 26, 2021

awesome - going to give this a try.

@audreez what sol-ark model do you have? Thanks!

audreez · Oct 28, 2021

solardad said:
awesome - going to give this a try.

@audreez what sol-ark model do you have? Thanks!

12k outdoor

Shawn Hayes · Nov 3, 2021

solardad said:
awesome - going to give this a try.

@audreez what sol-ark model do you have? Thanks!

How did that work? Did you have success? I have the older 12k, assuming mine should work as well this way?

audreez · Nov 3, 2021

still working no problems, i do have latest firmware for my sol-ark

Shawn Hayes · Nov 3, 2021

audreez said:
still working no problems, i do have latest firmware for my sol-ark

I did receive the latest update but not sure when the “last” update was. I do not have my LiFePo4 batteries connected to sol ark yet.
The extra wires in the Cat 5 cable, did you strip the out or just cut them? Pictures?

audreez · Nov 3, 2021

Shawn Hayes said:
I did receive the latest update but not sure when the “last” update was. I do not have my LiFePo4 batteries connected to sol ark yet.
The extra wires in the Cat 5 cable, did you strip the out or just cut them? Pictures?

i made my own cat5 so i just crimped 3 required wires and cut the rest off, didn't want to short them out by accident if they were live

Shawn Hayes · Nov 4, 2021

audreez said:
i made my own cat5 so i just crimped 3 required wires and cut the rest off, didn't want to short them out by accident if they were live

If Sol-Ark and Batrium are now communicating via CANbus, using Project Lychee protocol, how does this affect your Batrium settings in relation to the Sol-Ark settings? Charge/Discharge etc..?

audreez · Nov 30, 2021

Shawn Hayes said:
If Sol-Ark and Batrium are now communicating via CANbus, using Project Lychee protocol, how does this affect your Batrium settings in relation to the Sol-Ark settings? Charge/Discharge etc..?

solark obeys settings sent from batrium (charge/discharge current etc), unless you have max A charge discharge specified in the sol-ark less than in the batrium then it will not override that setting (it will jsut top out at that), seems like capacity is still a manual thing but not a big deal

krogoski · Jan 14, 2022

Just wanted to say thank you.
Figuring out how to make a Batrium talk to a Sol-ark was on my "prep" list for our setup I plan to commission this year.
I'm 'handy' with CAN and have looked high and low (pun intended) for any information on the CAN message definition for the Sol-ark and the Batrium (including the compatible inverters) with limited success. My plan was to make a CAN translator once I gathered the necessary information, but now I don't have to!! YAY

Again, Thank you!

Helpme · Feb 11, 2022

This is exciting! Plan to make my cable tonight. 2x sol-ark 12k outdoor and currently 3x eve 280ah 16s packs. Would love to speak with anyone knowledgeable on Batrium and Sol-ark as I am in grey area and need some hand holding, lol. Currently only able to use one 12k(no parallel operation w/no battery) and just got my Batrium online last night.

Helpme · Feb 11, 2022

Also, I’m having trouble getting my shuntmon working. Anyone with advice on this?

audreez · Feb 13, 2022

batirum is pretty straight forward, look at their site for some good how to videos

Shawn Hayes · Feb 28, 2022

Helpme said:
This is exciting! Plan to make my cable tonight. 2x sol-ark 12k outdoor and currently 3x eve 280ah 16s packs. Would love to speak with anyone knowledgeable on Batrium and Sol-ark as I am in grey area and need some hand holding, lol. Currently only able to use one 12k(no parallel operation w/no battery) and just got my Batrium online last night.

I also have dual 12 K Sol-Ark. Are you running a single cat five cable from Batrium to the master Sol-Ark or to both Sol-Ark‘s?
I would assume you’re only running one cable to the master but was just curious? I have everything basically set up, I just have not connected my 16s4p, Batrium system to Sol-Ark yet.

If anyone else wants to chime in with a little bit of advice, I am very near to actually hooking the system up and getting it running. I will have to ask questions when I get there, but just curious where you guys that have a little experience with this already have your settings for Batrium set?

audreez · Feb 28, 2022

i dont have dual solarks but im pretty sure just one cat5 to the master

Helpme · Mar 3, 2022

Shawn Hayes said:
I also have dual 12 K Sol-Ark. Are you running a single cat five cable from Batrium to the master Sol-Ark or to both Sol-Ark‘s?
I would assume you’re only running one cable to the master but was just curious? I have everything basically set up, I just have not connected my 16s4p, Batrium system to Sol-Ark yet.

If anyone else wants to chime in with a little bit of advice, I am very near to actually hooking the system up and getting it running. I will have to ask questions when I get there, but just curious where you guys that have a little experience with this already have your settings for Batrium set?

Yes 1

Helpme · Mar 3, 2022

Shawn Hayes said:
I also have dual 12 K Sol-Ark. Are you running a single cat five cable from Batrium to the master Sol-Ark or to both Sol-Ark‘s?
I would assume you’re only running one cable to the master but was just curious? I have everything basically set up, I just have not connected my 16s4p, Batrium system to Sol-Ark yet.

If anyone else wants to chime in with a little bit of advice, I am very near to actually hooking the system up and getting it running. I will have to ask questions when I get there, but just curious where you guys that have a little experience with this already have your settings for Batrium set?

I apologize for taking so long to respond. Battling with time to repair the fact that I did not tip balance. My i cha her only wants to produce 16 amps, so I’ll be another month to get that done. Meanwhile I decide to try and hook up one of my grow art inverters as a charger to get to a high state of charge, but now I can’t figure out how to upgrade the app for my BMS.

Shawn Hayes · Mar 14, 2022

Helpme said:
I apologize for taking so long to respond. Battling with time to repair the fact that I did not tip balance. My i cha her only wants to produce 16 amps, so I’ll be another month to get that done. Meanwhile I decide to try and hook up one of my grow art inverters as a charger to get to a high state of charge, but now I can’t figure out how to upgrade the app for my BMS.

No worries, I figured it would only be one cable but just thought I would ask. Seems like a dumb question but it never hurts to be sure.
Well I hope you are able to get your top balance and done.
Which BMS are you using?
Batrium here but not running that system yet. Still using my old battery system for now

Shawn Hayes · Jul 2, 2022

Since most people in this particular thread have Sol-Ark/Batrium paired, I am looking for some advice and recommendations on my state of charge limit settings?
I’m connecting my system today. I have thoroughly gone through all the settings that I am comfortable setting. However I do have some questions and was looking for some advice from the more experienced folks in this thread if interested let me know?
I wouldn’t mind a generic walk-through of the majority of settings just to see how good or bad I have done interpreting the information I have found on Batriums website.

Shawn Hayes · Jul 3, 2022

audreez said:
as the title says i played around with integrating sol-ark with batrium because it was raining and i'm tired of waiting for official support, i played with batrium pylontech and some other emulators but they didnt work very well or at all, eventually i set it to "project lychee" protocol that emulates LG-Chem resu protocol and sol-ark understands it all just doesn't seem send data back in a fashion that batrium understands. On sol-ark set to lithium 00, I made multiple tests by changing charging voltages/current and sol-ark obliges within seconds, soc from batrium is updated on sol-ark as well, nominal capacity doesn't seem to update after initial integration but removing the lithium integration and enabling it again updates it (or just set it in sol-ark), i have my batrium setup to long life lipo so once cells hit 3.5v soc updates to 100% and batrium sends 0 current to sol-ark, then solark redirects current back to grid within seconds (tested this few times by turning off solar letting it consume ~10 amps then turning it back on to make sure its consistent and it was)

you can use a regular cat5 network cable but only use pins 4 (solid blue - can hi),5 (blue/white can lo),6 (green ground) no resistor and wire that to watchmon (mine is wm4)

see pics and hopefully this helps someone to get by until official integrations happens (its been "in progress" for a while now)
P.S. batrium does say canbus interface is in timeout status but seems like tx/rx go up and everything works ok

I have got my battery packs (16s4p) connected and Batrium talking to Sol-Ark. there are a few settings that I can’t figure out exactly how to configure?
On your sol ark screen it shows your normal ah capacity at 360 amp hours. My screen still reads zero amp hour capacity. Where and how do I adjust this in Batrium so it shows up on the Sol-Ark lithium screen?
Another question, in my Batrium remote comms control logic settings, under charging and discharging targets, I have voltage and current settings plugged in. But under power, (high/low - VA) I still have a zero. How do I determine what those numbers for the power VA setting should be and what does it affect?
Thanks for any help from anyone.

Shawn Hayes · Jul 5, 2022

In another Sol-Ark related thread, @coolwaterxii asked me to share my experience so far with getting the Batrium to communicate with my Sol-Ark. so I responded to @coolwaterxii to come to this thread and I would answer his questions and share some of my experience so far.
Photos below. System is dual sol-ark 12k’s with 16s4p LiFePo4, Batrium Watchmon core with 64 Blockmon M-8’s.
Basically it’s pretty much is @audreez first post in this thread. In Sol-Ark you change your battery set up to be a BMS lithium 00, and I select active battery as well.
I use the CAT5 cable leaving the original ethernet plug on one end and stripping out the extra wires, leaving the blue, white blue and green wires, adding Ferrells, then connecting them to the canbus connector on the Batrium.
Of course before this process started I already had the settings for the most part preset in the Batrium. My biggest stumbling block was finding out where to enter the correct charge settings from Batrium so that Sol-Ark would display and have the correct charge and discharge and voltage settings from the Batrium. This is found in the remote setting screen which is one of the areas I still have lots of questions about.
If I made any significant changes to the settings in Batrium, I noticed that some time the lithium display screen in the Sol-Ark would display either zero settings or sometimes it would change and have your charge to voltage set at 237 V which obviously is not correct. So that is something that you have to monitor closely that when you make changes how does it affect what it’s telling Sol-Ark. (Edit: The process described above happened during resynchronization when I changed hardware settings, especially with the cellmon settings, not control logic settings, noted in the paragraph that follows this edit.)
I also found that sometimes when it ask you to do a re-synchronization, it will tend to make crazy things happen with the Sol-Ark. Sometimes it changes your settings and at one point for some reason, I lost all the settings in the Batrium and had to start from scratch.
I actually had to do a resynchronization this morning because I made a few more small minor changes yesterday. So I waited until this morning when there was no sunshine, disconnected canbus from the Batrium to Sol-Ark, then did the resynchronization process, and once that was complete, I then reconnected the two. Doing that process seem to work best as it did not create a glitch between the two communicating..
I have found that sometimes disabling and re-enabling the lithium battery set up in Sol-Ark helps that but more times it seems that whatever changes I made to the Batrium had to be reverted back to the previous settings. I have looked at as much information as I can including Batrium website. They have great instructions, but quite honestly, some of the things that they say I just really do not understand yet. Hoping to get some help from this community? However I know Batrium is out there if I must go that route.
Hope this helps?
Questions?
Thoughts?

coolwaterxii · Nov 17, 2022

Shawn Hayes said:
In another Sol-Ark related thread, @coolwaterxii asked me to share my experience so far with getting the Batrium to communicate with my Sol-Ark. so I responded to @coolwaterxii to come to this thread and I would answer his questions and share some of my experience so far.
Photos below. System is dual sol-ark 12k’s with 16s4p LiFePo4, Batrium Watchmon core with 64 Blockmon M-8’s.
Basically it’s pretty much is @audreez first post in this thread. In Sol-Ark you change your battery set up to be a BMS lithium 00, and I select active battery as well.
I use the CAT5 cable leaving the original ethernet plug on one end and stripping out the extra wires, leaving the blue, white blue and green wires, adding Ferrells, then connecting them to the canbus connector on the Batrium.
Of course before this process started I already had the settings for the most part preset in the Batrium. My biggest stumbling block was finding out where to enter the correct charge settings from Batrium so that Sol-Ark would display and have the correct charge and discharge and voltage settings from the Batrium. This is found in the remote setting screen which is one of the areas I still have lots of questions about.
If I made any significant changes to the settings in Batrium, I noticed that some time the lithium display screen in the Sol-Ark would display either zero settings or sometimes it would change and have your charge to voltage set at 237 V which obviously is not correct. So that is something that you have to monitor closely that when you make changes how does it affect what it’s telling Sol-Ark. (Edit: The process described above happened during resynchronization when I changed hardware settings, especially with the cellmon settings, not control logic settings, noted in the paragraph that follows this edit.)
I also found that sometimes when it ask you to do a re-synchronization, it will tend to make crazy things happen with the Sol-Ark. Sometimes it changes your settings and at one point for some reason, I lost all the settings in the Batrium and had to start from scratch.
I actually had to do a resynchronization this morning because I made a few more small minor changes yesterday. So I waited until this morning when there was no sunshine, disconnected canbus from the Batrium to Sol-Ark, then did the resynchronization process, and once that was complete, I then reconnected the two. Doing that process seem to work best as it did not create a glitch between the two communicating..
I have found that sometimes disabling and re-enabling the lithium battery set up in Sol-Ark helps that but more times it seems that whatever changes I made to the Batrium had to be reverted back to the previous settings. I have looked at as much information as I can including Batrium website. They have great instructions, but quite honestly, some of the things that they say I just really do not understand yet. Hoping to get some help from this community? However I know Batrium is out there if I must go that route.
Hope this helps?
Questions?
Thoughts?

Thanks for sharing this info. I'll try this on this coming weekend.
Awesome custom battery rack setup!

audreez · Jun 26, 2023

anyone upgraded to X.2.2.2 and 1.4.3.F (comm) and still have batrium working ? i upgraded my 15k and closed loop stopped working, interestingly enough rs485 data stopped flowing as well...

Shawn Hayes · Jun 26, 2023

audreez said:
anyone upgraded to X.2.2.2 and 1.4.3.F (comm) and still have batrium working ? i upgraded my 15k and closed loop stopped working, interestingly enough rs485 data stopped flowing as well...

No. Since Sol-Ark data was being sent to Chinese based servers and updates were pushed without notice, causing system restarts, mine were kept off WiFi. My dual 12-K Sol-ark wifi dongles are now used for solar assistant.
Besides, after issues with software update bugs, etc, and after my last update to fix generator start issues, I’m no longer taking updates. It seemed, to me, that when I would accept an update, it seemed to create another issue. I even had a Sol-Ark customer support tech tell me not to do update unless I had specified issues because one fix may create other clitches. So the update to fix my generator start issues was my last update.
I’m still on:
Comm: 142e
MCU:Ver1109

This does not surprise me, perhaps the new updated software doesn’t want you to DIY your own hack BMS/battery system.

Edited.

Shawn Hayes · Jul 11, 2023

audreez said:
anyone upgraded to X.2.2.2 and 1.4.3.F (comm) and still have batrium working ? i upgraded my 15k and closed loop stopped working, interestingly enough rs485 data stopped flowing as well...

Any updates? Back to normal, any solutions?

Sol-ark + batrium canbus integration workaround until its supported

New Member

Attachments

Solar Enthusiast

New Member

Learning Everyday

New Member

Learning Everyday

New Member

Learning Everyday

New Member

New Member

New Member

New Member

New Member

Learning Everyday

New Member

New Member

New Member

Learning Everyday

Learning Everyday

Learning Everyday

Attachments

Learning Everyday

Attachments

New Member

New Member

Learning Everyday

Learning Everyday

Similar threads