Getting Data DIRECTLY from a Tigo TAP - is it possible ?

[championc]

Hi all,

I am wondering if I can get the data from a Tigo TAP from it's RS485 interface straight into a Raspberry Pi or similar ?

It seems to me that the Tigo simply sends the Data into a Tigo Gateway and sends the data out to the cloud, so I guess it's all about knowing the format of the RS485 data. Oh, bring back RS232, it was so much easier to see data streaming !!!

Ultimately, I want to get the data rom the TAP into Node-Red running on my Raspberry Pi

 

[eddie3000]

Have you contacted tigo? They might help, you never know.

I asked ginlong for information regarding their rs485 communications protocol for my solis inverter and they kindly sent me a document with heaps of information, free of charge.

 

[shavermcspud]

Have you contacted tigo? They might help, you never know.

I asked ginlong for information regarding their rs485 communications protocol for my solis inverter and they kindly sent me a document with heaps of information, free of charge.

If you have an up to date modbus register for Solis/ginlong pop it on the resources section on here, will be helpful to many others.

 

[eddie3000]

pop it on the resources section on here, will be helpful to many others.

How do you do that?

 

[shavermcspud]

How do you do that?

Go to resources at the top of the page and click add resource

 

[eddie3000]

Done!

 

[shavermcspud]

Done!

Hi Eddie, that document is nearlyfive years old and not 2021, look at the addendum page 3, it doesn't cover any of their new 4/5G inverters I have the 2020 document for 4G & 5G models but i presumed you had a newer one. might want to rename it as 2018 and ill add to your resource the 2020 versions for both generations.

 

[eddie3000]

Hi Eddie, that document is nearlyfive years old and not 2021, look at the addendum page 3, it doesn't cover any of their new 4/5G inverters I have the 2020 document for 4G & 5G models but i presumed you had a newer one. might want to rename it as 2018 and ill add to your resource the 2020 versions for both generations.

We are going off topic. I think I did add a 2019 at the end of the file name. But this is the file that ginlong has provided me with, which leads me to beleive that it should be compatible with most ginlong inverters. The technical support people told me that's what they had. I suppose it'll have to do.

 

[shavermcspud]

We are going off topic. I think I did add a 2019 at the end of the file name. But this is the file that ginlong has provided me with, which leads me to beleive that it should be compatible with most ginlong inverters. The technical support people told me that's what they had. I suppose it'll have to do.

The filename you posted says 2021. I can assure you those are not the registers for the latest generation of Solis inverters, I have written over 180 Modbus flows in nodered for many Solis inverters over the past two years for both 4G & 5G and those aren't the ones in that document. Attached is the documents with the correct registers for the 4G and 5G inverters

 

[eddie3000]

Thank you for pointing that out, and yes, it was mistakenly named as 2022. I have edited it to avoid further confusion.

 

[wills106]

I am wondering if I can get the data from a Tigo TAP from it's RS485 interface straight into a Raspberry Pi or similar ?

Did you have any luck getting any data on the Modbus registers used on the Tigo equipment?

 

[championc]

I still haven't tried myself yet

 

[S474N]

Also looking for modbus registers address for TIGO TAP. I suppose, that main unit is TAP (modbus master), because it can send command to rapid shutdown to all units.

 

[tve]

Tigo is treating everything as proprietary and refuse to provide any info. See https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/16299740684179-Utilizzo-protocollo-Modbus and https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4414123527443-TAP-communication-protocol
They are spreading mis-information, like claiming that it aggregates data and only sends it every 15-20 minutes (https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/12531595243027-Slow-data-updates-premium), which is totally bogus as can be verified easily by logging packets. They are also spreading FUD around warranty and rapid disconnect.
I cannot find any privacy policy that covers the data we are forced to send to their servers.
They will happily provide docs on how to connect _other_ equipment to the CCA so they can ingest more data...
I'm probably going to pay for the premium subscription so I can easily download the data (it's "only" $20/yr, kind'a surprised that makes it worthwhile for them to even charge...).
The alternative would be to attach a read-only probe to the modbus between TAP and CCA and snoop on the values as the CCA reads them. That would take some reverse engineering work...

 

[darkmode]

Tigo is treating everything as proprietary and refuse to provide any info. See https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/16299740684179-Utilizzo-protocollo-Modbus and https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4414123527443-TAP-communication-protocol
They are spreading mis-information, like claiming that it aggregates data and only sends it every 15-20 minutes (https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/12531595243027-Slow-data-updates-premium), which is totally bogus as can be verified easily by logging packets. They are also spreading FUD around warranty and rapid disconnect.
I cannot find any privacy policy that covers the data we are forced to send to their servers.
They will happily provide docs on how to connect _other_ equipment to the CCA so they can ingest more data...
I'm probably going to pay for the premium subscription so I can easily download the data (it's "only" $20/yr, kind'a surprised that makes it worthwhile for them to even charge...).
The alternative would be to attach a read-only probe to the modbus between TAP and CCA and snoop on the values as the CCA reads them. That would take some reverse engineering work...

In my case, unfortunately even paying the $20/yr for data access results in not getting any data due to their cloud infrastructure becoming overloaded. I get this banner all the time now:

Notice: Due to high volumes of traffic causing some processing delays, data shown here may be delayed. Our teams are working on this. Your system is working properly and no production data will be lost.

I've had no metrics for 3 days. It would be nice if someone knew how to authenticate against the CCA. It listens on port 80 but returns a HTTP 401 Unauthorized.

 

[darkmode]

Hi all,

I am wondering if I can get the data from a Tigo TAP from it's RS485 interface straight into a Raspberry Pi or similar ?

It seems to me that the Tigo simply sends the Data into a Tigo Gateway and sends the data out to the cloud, so I guess it's all about knowing the format of the RS485 data. Oh, bring back RS232, it was so much easier to see data streaming !!!

Ultimately, I want to get the data rom the TAP into Node-Red running on my Raspberry Pi

I managed to wire up a Pi to the main RS485 interface. I see a steady flow of raw binary frames but I don't know where to go from here.

I would love to work with anyone to begin breaking this down and parsing the data into readable output.

 

[keys]

I managed to wire up a Pi to the main RS485 interface. I see a steady flow of raw binary frames but I don't know where to go from here.

I would love to work with anyone to begin breaking this down and parsing the data into readable output.

Can you please explain how did you wire up the PI with the RS485?
I would love to get real-time data into my Home Assistant

 

[Mr.Hyde]

I just had a Tigo system installed last week. It is on my list of things to do to examine this RS485 stream, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. My plan was just to use an RS485<->USB adapter and log some of the data (should show up as a serial port). There are a few SW tools around that will attempt to parse it if it is MODBUS, but I'm not sure how useful that will be.

It seems like the more common method is to get inside the CCA and embed a script that dumps the data out of it instead: https://www.photovoltaikforum.com/thread/149592-details-protokolle-zugang-auf-tigo-cca/?pageNo=1
(I haven't tried this either yet).

I'm also not quite sure what to do with it in HA as far as visualizing it (even if I get it in with MQTT).

 

[Mr.Hyde]

I successfully followed the instructions on the phtovoltaikforum to gain access to the Tigo and its underlying file system. This lets you enable access to lots of extra data:


Next, I need to figure out what to do with it...
There are some examples on the forum to push it to InfluxDB, but I haven't used that before.

 

[darkmode]

I just had a Tigo system installed last week. It is on my list of things to do to examine this RS485 stream, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. My plan was just to use an RS485<->USB adapter and log some of the data (should show up as a serial port). There are a few SW tools around that will attempt to parse it if it is MODBUS, but I'm not sure how useful that will be.

It seems like the more common method is to get inside the CCA and embed a script that dumps the data out of it instead: https://www.photovoltaikforum.com/thread/149592-details-protokolle-zugang-auf-tigo-cca/?pageNo=1
(I haven't tried this either yet).

I'm also not quite sure what to do with it in HA as far as visualizing it (even if I get it in with MQTT).

Thanks! This was very helpful with the help of Google Translator.

I was able to get in and implant a cron job to export live data into influxdb. Been working fine for two days and after rebooting.

Next I'll integrate with Home Assistant and OpenEVSE. Fun!

 

[Mr.Hyde]

Thanks! This was very helpful with the help of Google Translator.

I was able to get in and implant a cron job to export live data into influxdb. Been working fine for two days and after rebooting.

Next I'll integrate with Home Assistant and OpenEVSE. Fun!

Awesome. Let me know how you end up visualizing it in HA.

How are you running influxdb?

 

[darkmode]

Awesome. Let me know how you end up visualizing it in HA.

How are you running influxdb?

I'm thinking of two different ways to do this. Haven't settled on one yet.

Option 1: Use the InfluxDB integration for Home Assistant to write a HA sensor that queries influxdb on an interval.

Option 2: Use telegraf to query InfluxDB on an interval that posts the "live" values to an MQTT topic.

I may just implement both options for my use cases. The MQTT option gives my EV charger the direct capability of diverting a percentage of the generated PV to charge my car. I suppose I could do it all in Home Assistant as well.

I run InfluxDB on one of my ARM devices. That's where all my sensor data resides. With option 2 I could output to multiple destinations, one being the free InfluxDB cloud service for redundancy.

Edit: I just realized I didn't answer your question of how I'll visualize in HA. When you create a sensor you can use it on the built-in Energy dashboard. I'll just link the sensor to the Solar Generation section. Should be easy.

 

[Mr.Hyde]

I'm thinking of two different ways to do this. Haven't settled on one yet.

Option 1: Use the InfluxDB integration for Home Assistant to write a HA sensor that queries influxdb on an interval.

Option 2: Use telegraf to query InfluxDB on an interval that posts the "live" values to an MQTT topic.

I may just implement both options for my use cases. The MQTT option gives my EV charger the direct capability of diverting a percentage of the generated PV to charge my car. I suppose I could do it all in Home Assistant as well.

I run InfluxDB on one of my ARM devices. That's where all my sensor data resides. With option 2 I could output to multiple destinations, one being the free InfluxDB cloud service for redundancy.

Edit: I just realized I didn't answer your question of how I'll visualize in HA. When you create a sensor you can use it on the built-in Energy dashboard. I'll just link the sensor to the Solar Generation section. Should be easy.

I guess I could probably run the influxdb on the same Pi 4B as I am running HA? Otherwise, I have a Windows box that mostly just runs Plex.

I have data from Solar Assistant piped into the HA Energy dashboard. (Someday I'll probably replace SA with direct monitoring of Sol-Ark using RS485).
I was trying to figure out if there was a way to visualize all of the panels individually, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around YAML.

 

[darkmode]

I guess I could probably run the influxdb on the same Pi 4B as I am running HA? Otherwise, I have a Windows box that mostly just runs Plex.

I have data from Solar Assistant piped into the HA Energy dashboard. (Someday I'll probably replace SA with direct monitoring of Sol-Ark using RS485).
I was trying to figure out if there was a way to visualize all of the panels individually, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around YAML.

Oh I see. You're asking about visualizing each panel in HA. Yeah not something I want to do in HA. I intend to visualize that in grafana as a next step.

Probably an overlay of panel values over an image of my roof? I dunno. Maybe that would be too tacky.

 

[Mr.Hyde]

oof. That was both easier and harder than I expected.
I just installed InfluxDB into HA. This makes it easy to pass data from HA to InfluxDB, but makes it harder to get data directly into the InfluxDB instance.
With the help of ChatGPT, I created a bash script to parse

/mnt/ffs/data/daqs

and then pass the info for each optimizer to HA using the REST API (which can be called from curl).
Once in HA, I can pass the info to InfluxDB.

This worked!
But it was made more complicated because:

• Apparently this thing runs BusyBox and doesn't have a complete version of grep, so the initial parsing method didn't work.
• For... reasons... crond is using a file that is NOT where crontab looks. So crontab -e doesn't edit the right thing.
• I created HA sensors for each optimizer, that then have attributes for power, voltage, etc. Although this is cleaner, I haven't figured out how to get InfluxDB to understand this (yet).