EG4 monitoring software / app

[AndreasPassat]

Curious to know who is using either the software for the computer and or the app (for cell) to monitor their EG4 inverters.
I'd like to be able to "check in" during the day and see what's going but I have some hesitancy about this kind of thing.
I'm concerned about data collection from 3rd party sources that have no damn business collecting my data.
Anybody have any insight or suggestions or experience?

 

[wpns]

Anybody have any insight or suggestions or experience?

Well, I like to harvest the data myself and/or subscribe to the MQTT on Solar Assistant and then upload micro webpages to AWS S3 buckets, but that’s a lot of work if your primary purpose is to keep people from spying on you.

 

[dfw_dude]

I'm using the app and the PC browser interface -- it's nice enough , does the job. It's not the fanciest or best designed out there, but you can get to what you need easily enough.

Data wise - there's not much they can collect. You don't have to give your name, phone number, address, or any info to the app to setup an account. Just make something up if you want. Only "real" bit of info they can get would be your email address. You can always make up a burner/bullshit account on gmail if you are that worried.

If you are going full tin foil hat -- you could always restrict the dongle interface to a specific VLAN or restricted wireless network. I personally just use it like any other device, there's really not much personally identifiable information they can collect to begin with.

 

[wpns]

If you are going full tin foil hat -- you could always restrict the dongle interface to a specific VLAN or restricted wireless network. I personally just use it like any other device, there's really not much personally identifiable information they can collect to begin with.

[Note, I've been reading the Risks Digest since it's inception, and I know computers pretty well, so consider this worst-case blue-sky thinking.]

Remember that this means the Chinese (govt?) has a device on your LAN that could potentially do pretty much anything. Full tin-foil-hat would be poke around in your network, rope all your computers into a botnet, silently gather credentials, and then some day shut down/blow up as much stuff as they can (we already know 18Kpv in parallel with the wrong cable can do some serious damage). Once there's sufficient penetration it's conceivable you could destabilize the grid by coordinating enough grid-tie inverters, but on a personal level it'd be a pretty big deal to just brick my inverters and batteries.

Not to say this is likely (they farmed their firmware development out to Elbonia, and the above takes a _lot_ more competence, but it's not impossible), but I've got way other things to worry about. I mean if you are really concerned, just block the Internet and us SA or something to harvest data locally, and only reconnect when you need firmware updates or remote tech support. I mean nowadays you can't trust any software you didn't build yourself using a trusted compiler and only manually vetted APIs and libraries, but life's too short.