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Solar Assistant sadness

SparkyJJO said:
Class 10 is just the speed rating, really. Has nothing to do with endurance.
You want one that is rated for continuous writes (i.e. for dashcams, security cams, etc).
Click to expand...
This one was recommended for my dash cam.
And it seemed to work well for it.
 
It seems odd that a system that collects data that is of historic interest or usage does not either:-

a) have a backup option or
b) at least advise that users perform manual backups regularly, even if that means taking the SD card out of the system and plugging it into a USB adaptor on a PC.
 
timselectric said:
Well, after 6 months of solar monitoring ecstasy. It finally happened...... it crashed and I had to reflash the SD card. I won't go into that 3 day nightmare. But the real sadness is from losing all of the logged data. It's like the last 6 months never existed. I can't even imagine how upset I will be if it happened again after a few years.
I think that I read something about saving the data externally, but can't seem to find it.
There's got to be a solution for this problem.
I really like the functionality and ease of use of Solar Assistant, but I'm very uncomfortable setting off on another journey with it. If I don't have any protection from this gut punch, next time.
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Sorry about that.
Sucks losing that data.
SSD solves that problem. I did mine after reading on here the same scenario.
 
Nobodybusiness said:
Sorry about that.
Sucks losing that data.
SSD solves that problem. I did mine after reading on here the same scenario.
Click to expand...
I looked at that video thinking oh yeah I can do that, shouldn't be too difficult and then my eyes glazed over and my ears started to bleed. Fuck that I'll wait for the backup procedure from solar assistant.
 
Quattrohead said:
I looked at that video thinking oh yeah I can do that, shouldn't be too difficult and then my eyes glazed over and my ears started to bleed. Fuck that I'll wait for the backup procedure from solar assistant.
Click to expand...
Lol it’s not that bad.

He does a good job showing what to do.

I used a Whitepaper from someone else but the video is good.
 
All good advice - you need an SSD. And then you need to create backups of the SSD. Welcome to the world of long term data storage and recovery. I've used raspberry pi(s) for a long time on various projects and I can tell you that those little memory cards are guaranteed to fail. It's just a matter of time.
Even SSDs will fail. I had one fail on my laptop. What a headache. But luckily I had backups so I could pull the data I needed onto the new SSD with a newly installed operating system.
Using a USB hardrive(SSD) is an easy way to backup files.
 
Nobodybusiness said:
SSD solves that problem.
Click to expand...
Without a backup solution that just kicks the tin down the road.

I have the Home Assistant integration for Solar Assistant so all the data I'm interested in having backed up is also stored there and my HA has automated regular full backups to my Google drive.

But I will be far happier once SA release an automated backup solution. My SA is operating on vendor supplied hardware.
 
wattmatters said:
Without a backup solution that just kicks the tin down the road.

I have the Home Assistant integration for Solar Assistant so all the data I'm interested in having backed up is also stored there and my HA has automated regular full backups to my Google drive.

But I will be far happier once SA release an automated backup solution. My SA is operating on vendor supplied hardware.
Click to expand...
I understand that but when was the last time you had an SSD fail?
 
I've actually had a couple SSD's fail in the last few years. But not doing the very simple thing that Solar Assistant does. They aren't as reliable as some people think they are. But they definitely have a longer lifespan than an SD card.

I'm on Pierre's side from SolarAssistant. Most of the time when an SD card fails, its a cheap $5 unit they pulled out of their junk drawer and are now upset. Solar Assistant is very very low disk usage. Yes, it is reading/writing, but its a HELL of a lot less than other devices, like security cameras etc. I don't see how Solar Assistant can be responsible for corrupting an SD Card unless it was on its last leg to begin with. And just like Pierre said, "It's rare that you need to reflash the SD card, unfortunately it's hard to tell why it was necessary." You can't prove that Solar Assistant was the one to kill it, because there's no way of knowing.

At the end, I do agree that an SSD is a better fit. That being said, I still have a Sandisk SD card in mine.
 
Lt.Dan said:
I don't see how Solar Assistant can be responsible for corrupting an SD Card unless it was on its last leg to begin with.
Click to expand...
It's a product that implements it's own operating system and is fully capable of restricting the types of I/O devices and brands that are used. It's absolutely at fault for poor implementation and a bad reputation for data corruption that follows.
 
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
It's a product that implements it's own operating system and is fully capable of restricting the types of I/O devices and brands that are used. It's absolutely at fault for poor implementation and a bad reputation for data corruption that follows.
Click to expand...
How can you restrict someone from putting in a Cheap Chinese SD card instead of a Sandisk SD Card?

I also believe the Raspberry Pi Foundation was the ones to determine that the Pi strictly used an SD card for storage. Solar Assistant was not responsible for the RPi foundation on that decision.

Once you start requiring much more advanced hardware etc, pricing goes up, and your customer base gets much smaller. Just like people posting in here, the average individual is NOT tech savvy enough to flash to an SSD.
 
Lt.Dan said:
I've actually had a couple SSD's fail in the last few years. But not doing the very simple thing that Solar Assistant does. They aren't as reliable as some people think they are. But they definitely have a longer lifespan than an SD card.

I'm on Pierre's side from SolarAssistant. Most of the time when an SD card fails, its a cheap $5 unit they pulled out of their junk drawer and are now upset. Solar Assistant is very very low disk usage. Yes, it is reading/writing, but its a HELL of a lot less than other devices, like security cameras etc. I don't see how Solar Assistant can be responsible for corrupting an SD Card unless it was on its last leg to begin with. And just like Pierre said, "It's rare that you need to reflash the SD card, unfortunately it's hard to tell why it was necessary." You can't prove that Solar Assistant was the one to kill it, because there's no way of knowing.

At the end, I do agree that an SSD is a better fit. That being said, I still have a Sandisk SD card in mine.
Click to expand...
well, good old intel 240 gb datacenters here.
i think they will outlast me.

corruption of an sd card isnt that hard.
those cards were never developped for the small writes a database does.
what does make me wonder though ;
pierre does send the data to his cloud when you allow the raspi internet access, which means in theory he already has the data to some extend and it would be pretty easy to download it from his cloud back to the raspi
 
houseofancients said:
pierre does send the data to his cloud when you allow the raspi internet access, which means in theory he already has the data to some extend and it would be pretty easy to download it from his cloud back to the raspi
Click to expand...
It's just viewable via an internet connection to your RPi.

Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
It's a product that implements it's own operating system and is fully capable of restricting the types of I/O devices and brands that are used. It's absolutely at fault for poor implementation and a bad reputation for data corruption that follows.
Click to expand...
No one is forcing you to use it.

If you have something with the simplicity, utility and user friendliness SA provides people (who are buying budget brand inverters to begin with) and which comes with superior data management capabilities and costs less, then by all means share.
 
Lt.Dan said:
How can you restrict someone from putting in a Cheap Chinese SD card instead of a Sandisk SD Card?

I also believe the Raspberry Pi Foundation was the ones to determine that the Pi strictly used an SD card for storage. Solar Assistant was not responsible for the RPi foundation on that decision.

Once you start requiring much more advanced hardware etc, pricing goes up, and your customer base gets much smaller. Just like people posting in here, the average individual is NOT tech savvy enough to flash to an SSD.
Click to expand...
Dude selling a product and deciding to base it on raspberrypi is his decision entirely.

It looks like maybe you don't understand open source. Nothing is stopping him from making solarassistantos which has a script at startup to make sure you're using a reliable disk. He also has hardware locked licensing, meaning he could simply decide to have people agree that they're going to use an approved storage configuration before issuing them a license that runs on their pi.

There are a million ways to address this. Just because he took a shortcut and used free open source software doesn't mean it's "oh gee darn rpi's fault" as soon as something doesn't work. You have to actually get to the bottom of the issue or work with your users on making sure they deploy in a stable environment, this guy clearly hasn't done that.
 
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
Dude selling a product and deciding to base it on raspberrypi is his decision entirely.

It looks like maybe you don't understand open source. Nothing is stopping him from making solarassistantos which has a script at startup to make sure you're using a reliable disk. He also has hardware locked licensing, meaning he could simply decide to have people agree that they're going to use an approved storage configuration before issuing them a license that runs on their pi.

There are a million ways to address this. Just because he took a shortcut and used free open source software doesn't mean it's "oh gee darn rpi's fault" as soon as something doesn't work. You have to actually get to the bottom of the issue or work with your users on making sure they deploy in a stable environment, this guy clearly hasn't done that.
Click to expand...
so really, you problem is you have pay for it.
as you said, most of it is open source, so go build it yourself and have fun doing that
 
wattmatters said:
No one is forcing you to use it.
Click to expand...
You may not understand why I would go out of my way to comment or know what my background is. That's okay.

I view it as worthwhile to call these weak points out so that other people don't buy it thinking that it's a polished or reliable solution for less technical users.
 
houseofancients said:
so really, you problem is you have pay for it.
as you said, most of it is open source, so go build it yourself and have fun doing that
Click to expand...
It looks like you either didn't read or understand my posts. VenusOS+dbus-serialbattery already covers everything I had considered solarassistant for. dbus-serialbattery didn't support my battery at the time, so I considered solar assistant. I'm happy that I didn't bother to use it now.

VenusOS is compatible with the rest of my hardware, and already open source.

There was no need to "go build it yourself", it was already built.
 
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