Monitor JK BMS with Solar Assistant?

Redbeardbeer said:

Hi all.

Can Solar Assistant with a Pi work with the JK BMS's RS485 protocol?
Looking for a way to remotely monitor my battery that has a JK BMS attached.

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upnorthandpersonal said:

This should be easy. I don't use solar assistant, but something based on a Pi anyway:

Off-grid Solar / Battery monitoring and control freeware

Im building a freeware realtime software/hardware monitoring solution that provides intimate details and decision making information about a solar system. I intend to be fully off grid in the near future and want to be self sufficient for power. My goal is complete control over every aspect of...

diysolarforum.com

I've written a driver for this BMS in the past myself and several other implementations are out there, like this one:

GitHub - jblance/mpp-solar: Python package to communicate to MPP Solar PIP-4048MS inverters (and similar)

Python package to communicate to MPP Solar PIP-4048MS inverters (and similar) - jblance/mpp-solar

github.com

And this one:

esphome-jk-bms/components/jk_bms at main · syssi/esphome-jk-bms

ESPHome component to monitor and control a Jikong Battery Management System (JK-BMS) via UART-TTL or BLE - syssi/esphome-jk-bms

github.com

Adding support to Solar Assistant should not be an issue.

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elvis_asaftei said:

I will try it and I recommend the creator of Solar Assistant to add support it as a priority because it is a very good 2A active equalizer bms .

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upnorthandpersonal said:

And as I mention in the edit in my post, if he doesn't have the BMS and needs someone to test/help out/write it, I'm willing to do that. He just has to contact me here.

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upnorthandpersonal said:

This should be easy. I don't use solar assistant, but something based on a Pi anyway:

Off-grid Solar / Battery monitoring and control freeware

Im building a freeware realtime software/hardware monitoring solution that provides intimate details and decision making information about a solar system. I intend to be fully off grid in the near future and want to be self sufficient for power. My goal is complete control over every aspect of...

diysolarforum.com

I've written a driver for this BMS in the past myself and several other implementations are out there, like this one:

GitHub - jblance/mpp-solar: Python package to communicate to MPP Solar PIP-4048MS inverters (and similar)

Python package to communicate to MPP Solar PIP-4048MS inverters (and similar) - jblance/mpp-solar

github.com

And this one:

esphome-jk-bms/components/jk_bms at main · syssi/esphome-jk-bms

ESPHome component to monitor and control a Jikong Battery Management System (JK-BMS) via UART-TTL or BLE - syssi/esphome-jk-bms

github.com

Adding support to Solar Assistant should not be an issue. Did the author indicate he's working on this? I personally don't have that software and wouldn't have a use for it, but I could help out getting a driver working if the author is interested.

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upnorthandpersonal said:

And this one:

esphome-jk-bms/components/jk_bms at main · syssi/esphome-jk-bms

ESPHome component to monitor and control a Jikong Battery Management System (JK-BMS) via UART-TTL or BLE - syssi/esphome-jk-bms

github.com

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elvis_asaftei said:

Because you wrote the driver for MPP Solar, you have a lot of experience with it, is it possible to connect directly to this wifi dongle of MPP Solar inverter directly and get the data via wifi and avoid cable madness ? It is a lot simplier to connect 9 inverters over wifi that with 9 cables to a single Rasbery Pi, am I right ?

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upnorthandpersonal said:

Yeah, the mpp-solar project has bluetooth support for JK already. Easy enough to add...

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elvis_asaftei said:

so if the developer will add it, we will be able to use it... it is so much more convenient to use Bluetoth that is a standardized protocol instead of so many adapters with various cipsets and just one works and the others do not work ... i had spent 2 days and not working just because os various cipsets from adapters

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elvis_asaftei said:

I want to connect Rasbery Pi to JK BMS using Bluetooth and not RS485, do you know how to do that ? (any links to documentation and steps to use my rasbery pi and JK BMS together)

Thank you

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GitHub - jblance/jkbms: repo with attempts to test connectivity to JK-BMS via BLE

repo with attempts to test connectivity to JK-BMS via BLE - jblance/jkbms

github.com

upnorthandpersonal said:

The VBAT on the BMS has full pack voltage, so yeah, don't connect that one

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Huck said:

This info is for a Jk BMS
JK-B2A24S20PH3.0S4.2.1

So I was able to take a usb to ttl cable ( this one
EVISWIY PL2303TA USB to TTL Serial Cable Debug Console Cable for Raspberry Pi 3 Pack
https://a.co/d/53rewfj ) with a 4 pin JST 1.25 mm plug, hooked up rx and tx and have it work using setting “Battery” “ USB to JBD RS485”. Please note: Although this setting is the only one my BMS will read info from, not all of the information is correct.
Here are screen shots so you can compare, notice time is the same. You can see that the battery capacity is different and SOC is too. But it is receiving data.
View attachment 98507
View attachment 98508

I also tried a ttl to rs485 adapter hooked to a rs485 to USB adapter, but for some reason that didn’t work. No mater what combination of adapters and wires I tried, I could not get any of them to work with “USB to JK RS485”

BIG NOTE: I instantly fried one of my ttl adapters connecting it to “VBAT” on the BMS. It supplied all of 54volts to the ttl adapter. Do not use!!! To make it work I connected Ground, RX, TX ONLY, not sure that you even need GRD. Thankfully I was smart enough to not have the USB side plugged into my RPi!

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Th3black said:

Nope, to be honest didn`t manage to conect the bms to sollar assistant like you did with the TTL adapter i still get invalid data received.I have also the RS485 dongle from JK but no sucess. When i sent e-mail to solar assistant they pointed out this forum page and nothing else. They told me that they will make a help page soon. Waiting for it. ...

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oaky said:

Seems your the only one that manged to do it, maybe share some info on how you done it ?

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Huck said:

What adapter do you have wired to the JK RS485 adapter? From what I can see on this page https://solar-assistant.io/shop and scroll down to Battery USB Cables and going through all of them they all seem to have the “FTDI chip” in all of them. I’m not sure how significant that is to this, but given that all of his cables have it I’m sure it means something.
If I were you I would try this one
(Industrial USB to RS485 Converter with FT232RL Embedded Protection Circuits 300-921600bps Baudrate for Industrial Control Equipments or Applications)
https://a.co/d/8oqOFuJ
I’m pretty sure the FT232RL is the “FTDI Chip”


To be clear, I connected the TTL to USB adapter from the RPi directly to the BMS (no jk adapter in between)

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Huck said:

Remember you need to hook up Rx to Tx and Tx to Rx between the Adapter and the BMS connection. Like this
View attachment 99015

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