MetricMoose
New Member
About a month ago, I did a weekend project to build a quick and dirty WiFi interface to monitor my Renogy Wanderer PWM controller that came with the 100W solar panel kit, and later their Rover MPPT 30A. This lets me check on its current stats and toggle the load from a local webpage, as well as use the Home Assistant REST sensor to poll and graph the stats. Hardware wise, I needed an RJ12 6 pin connector, an RS232 to TTL serial converter, a DC-DC converter board and an ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller. All of the parts I used together could be picked up for around $10 USD from Aliexpress.
For the Software, I forked an existing project where someone had done the hard work of figuring out Renogy's MODBUS protocol and translating it into Arduino code, then made some slight modifications to the code to work with the cheaper microcontroller that I already had. I then glued on bits of an example project for using the ESP8266 as a WiFi client device and a webserver.
For Home Assistant, my YAML file is in the "RenogyWeb" folder of my Github repo for the project. It's a bit less convenient since it uses a REST sensor, so you have to make sure the IP of the ESP8266 doesn't change. I accomplished that with a static DHCP lease from my router's DHCP server. You could also give it a static IP in the code if you want. Once the custom sensor was installed, I put some of the values in a pane on my dashboard. I'm sure adding MQTT isn't difficult, but I already had web access working so it was really quick to throw together a page that was formatted like JSON.
https://github.com/MetricMoose/ESPArduinoRenogy
And the Home Assistant integration:
For the Software, I forked an existing project where someone had done the hard work of figuring out Renogy's MODBUS protocol and translating it into Arduino code, then made some slight modifications to the code to work with the cheaper microcontroller that I already had. I then glued on bits of an example project for using the ESP8266 as a WiFi client device and a webserver.
For Home Assistant, my YAML file is in the "RenogyWeb" folder of my Github repo for the project. It's a bit less convenient since it uses a REST sensor, so you have to make sure the IP of the ESP8266 doesn't change. I accomplished that with a static DHCP lease from my router's DHCP server. You could also give it a static IP in the code if you want. Once the custom sensor was installed, I put some of the values in a pane on my dashboard. I'm sure adding MQTT isn't difficult, but I already had web access working so it was really quick to throw together a page that was formatted like JSON.
https://github.com/MetricMoose/ESPArduinoRenogy
And the Home Assistant integration:
