EG4 wifi dongle, please add MQTT

[dielectric]

@EG4TechSolutionsTeam
while trying ixp-bridge and eg4-bridge and looking at other solutions, I learned that the dongle itself is an ESP32 device
I suspect it would be a relatively straight forward change to add MQTT config to the http://10.10.10.1/index_en.html setup page and then publish the data to MQTT.

how about it?

this would not interfere with the EG4 monitoring site which I would love to keep.
this would be very useful to quite a number of people who are running HomeAssistant and would rather not add a SolarAssistant to their headaches.
I'm sure there are others who'd love to see this.
Thank you

 

[jwy224]

Yes to this. Please.

 

[wpns]

This would be great if they had a firmware team and access to the code.

You can DIY with a Raspberry Pi.

Better yet, add native Ethernet to your next inverter and MQTT on variable change instead of polling.

"And I want a pony, and whirled peas and ...."

Don't get me wrong, I want this too, but I don't think they _can_.

 

[kommando]

Or just take the webpage data and publish it to MQTT server on a Pi.

 

[wpns]

Or just take the webpage data and publish it to MQTT server on a Pi.

Nice, except for the poor refresh rate of the monitor.eg4... website. You can poll every 10 seconds if you DIY.

 

[kommando]

Nice, except for the poor refresh rate of the monitor.eg4... website. You can poll every 10 seconds if you DIY.

No data on http://10.10.10.1/other pages.html then ?

Maybe there is an API to access the local data.

 

[wpns]

No data on http://10.10.10.1/other pages.html then ?

Maybe there is an API to access the local data.

On the WiFi dongle there's a local API at port 8000 (which Solar Assistant uses, for instance), but that's missing (not implemented) on the Ethernet dongle, and you still can't poll very fast, as now the poor dongle has to service both port 8000 and the website upload.

 

[dielectric]

All good points, web page can be scraped, ixp-bridge can be made to work, solar assistant can be setup etc etc etc
The point of the post is not workarounds.
The point is this is a simple enough thing to add to make all the other hoop jumping unnecessary.
(no disrespect, I did search this and other sites, and will continue working with eg4-bridge to hopefully get that approach working)

 

[dielectric]

On the WiFi dongle there's a local API at port 8000 (which Solar Assistant uses, for instance), but that's missing (not implemented) on the Ethernet dongle, and you still can't poll very fast, as now the poor dongle has to service both port 8000 and the website upload.

the AP on the dongle with http://10.10.10.1/other is not the only way to access, the dongle connects to your wifi to upload to eg4 site and therefore has a 192.168.something.something IP per your WiFi DHCP config.
I don't see either one providing the data. All I am asking is a new simple page few fields on the http://10.10.10.1/mqtt_config to tell the ESP32 where to send the info.

 

[wpns]

The point is this is a simple enough thing to add

My point is, it’s not a simple thing:

I do not believe that EG4 has the source code for the software, as they farmed that project out to a third-party.

I do not believe that EG4 has a firmware team that is capable of doing this work.

I believe that the best way to get (changes in) inverter data from the micro processor that’s running the inverter into MQTT is something other than an RS 485 interface to a dongle into Wi-Fi Using Port 8000 to talk to solar assistant which then updates the MQTT server in home assistant which then… Where was I again? Building an inverter with a native ethernet interface and native MQTT and then enough horsepower to be able to do all the things that it needs to do without getting bogged down by rapid polling is a whole Nother rat hole, and see above about my belief in EG4s ability to be able to implement any of that.

 

[dielectric]

Thank you @wpns
I am not as familiar with what EG4 has / does not have. I thought I purchased an EG4 inverter and it made sense to me to bring up that question with them.
I am not after another inverter with ethernet etc. I am also obsessed with efficiency but not quite as much.
I would accept a wifi dongle sending mqtt packets to my server in addition to EG4 server.
I would be efficient enough for my taste.

If that can't be achieved, I will do what I can to get eg4-bridge running. That's just some code under linux not a big deal. I do hope I can have both metrics in my own HA and EG4 monitoring site.

I understand there is a 3rd party wifi dongle that should work to publish to MQTT, but I don't think it will continue publishing to EG4. $120 is not cheap but not terrible if it saves me 10hours of debugging. EG4 monitoring site would be missed.

 

[rogerheflin]

The dongle seems to be a generic modbus to network device, with minimal changes in default settings for eg4.

Nowhere in the dongle interface does it say EG4 or luxpower anywhere.

It appears to be this or some variant of this device:

https://mm.digikey.com/Volume0/opasdata/d220001/medias/docus/2612/113990976_EMW3090V2.pdf

And I am guessing the device does not even have the actual modbus definition on it and simply processes the requests sent via the API, so it really would need to have a lot of changes to query (all by itself) and update MQTT.

 

[Quattrohead]

The dongles already get stressed with Solar Assistant hitting them for data, I don't think there are enough brain cells in them to do MQTT too

 

[rogerheflin]

The dongles already get stressed with Solar Assistant hitting them for data, I don't think there are enough brain cells in them to do MQTT too

The stress is that the API has zero traffic control and the modbus runs at 115200 and requests when the API commands it, so each request takes a while to finish, and any other request while another is running it at same time times out.

It appears to be a very simple dumb device that has no understanding what data the inverter has and just processes the exact requests that API sends it, and only expects to have one device querying it in a linear way (ie query wait get data, query...