diy solar

diy solar

Monitoring Software-Solar Assistant, JK-BMS, ESPHome and Home Assistant

Hi, just managed to run a simple program on an esp32 after having to wait to get a new pc as the psu died on my 15+ year old tower! (i bought a mini pc! - great little device)
Esp32 Works ok. (tested with visual studio code)
But i dont yet even have anything to use to run home assistant core on. Anyone know if a rasberry pi 3 B+ would be good enough for this? Any real advantage of a rpi 4 over the 3b+?
Thanks ?
Check out a slim client PC. I have bought one and when I have a min I’m going to use it for HA. Much more robust than a Pi and made for 24/7 operation.
 
Any i3 or better processor desktop machine makes a great bare metal home assistant machine. I'm using a Dell vostro 270 for example, i 3220, 8 GB memory and 500 GB mechanical drive.
It was just hanging around in my pile of "I can't throw that away"
 
rpi 3 will work fine, its best to use an external USB SSD instead of an SD card
Ive got an rpi 3b+ today. Got ha installed on sd card. Got a 128gb samsung ssd, and have a sata to usb adapter, but im worried about using the adapter as it only takes power from the usb port, and this may damage the pi if the ssd draws too much current? (usb on my pi is limited to 1.2a). There are y splitter adapters to take power from another source, but these are only for sata 2 and below, my ssd is sata 3. How do you suggest i connect the ssd successfully? Get an powered enclosure? - apparently some work, some dont, so dont want to waste time and money gettting one that doesnt work with the pi....
 
rpi 3 will work fine, its best to use an external USB SSD instead of an SD card
After wasting a bunch of time, and buying an ssd, i have found out that what you say is not true. For rpi3 all models, it is not possible to use an ssd to boot home assistant from, only the version 4 rpi. The only way is to continue to boot from sd but use the ssd as storage only. You can boot normal rpi raspian os etc, but not HA. Maybe you can boot raspian and use some kind of container to run ha from within, but im not that clever.
 
Hey all!

I thought I would share my Home Assistant dashboard that I'm using on a cheap Samsung A7 pad. I am using it for smart home applications, but also monitoring my:

- Mains power and Sub-Panel (As a deduct reading) using ESPhome and 2 sets of CT clamps.
- 2 LV6548's, and Victron smart shunt using Solar Assistant.
- Finally after all this time!... an easy way to monitor my JK-BMS 2amp balancer using ESPhome (Bluetooth Version install) that I found here.

The JK-BMS monitoring was the last piece of the puzzle and I have screwed around for many many hours to only be disappointed until now.
You can see in the picture showing my power wall I am monitoring the Voltage of the pack, the Average cell voltage, the delta cell Voltage, and if the pack is balancing or not.
You can monitor each individual cell if you want as well, but I don't see a need to do that. If I see that the delta cell voltage is going out of whack I can hit the basement and inspect things closer if I need too. I could also bring up the app to check cell voltages but it's much nicer to glance at a screen!

Enjoy!
Dan
Hi, i dont suppose your a wizz at sorting issues getting the jk bms running? Mine doesnt seem to want to connect using the ha batmon add on.. The log file is here:

I think thats a different add on to the one your using, but thought id ask anyway! Thanks ?

Edit - also, if it were actually connecting, how do i view data from it in HA? Would it automatically come up on my dashboard? As there is nothing there regarding the batmon add on..?
 
As far as the jkbms yes you can! I do exactly that.

So you flash the jkbms program to the esp32 using ESPHome (Which is in your Home Assistant). The esp32 has both wifi and bluetooth built in.
The esp32 will need to be near the jkbms and will pull all information from the JK through bluetooth and will send the data to home assistant through the ESPHome (You add a new device and name it in there) for instance mine is just called jk-bms. I use several of these chips so it's a good idea to name them so you know which one you are dealing with later.

Using this method pulls in EVERYTHING! There is even a switch that you can tap on your phone to balance the pack.

I use Solar Assistant (Located near my inverters) to pull all the other data from my smart shunt and both inverters using mqtt in home assistant. There is pretty good documentation on doing that part from the Solar Assistant website.

Once this is all set up you can get really creative! Flash your lights or maybe turn them a different color if your batteries get too low? You name it!!

Here is a picture taken from my android which I use with home assistant like you asked about...

Let me know if I can help,
Dan

View attachment 129974
Which is the "jk bms program" you flash via ESPHome ? I have ESPHome installed on an ESP32 close to the JK, but have not found sufficiently clear info on how to pull the info through Bluetooth ...
 
I am very slowly learning how to do all this, this is where I've got to so far. Note the solar system and emporia tabs that contain a load more information.
Just found this thread and I'm very interested in how you were able to do this. I don't have HA, but I have Grafana & InfluxDB capturing my Emporia data so I'm thinking I just need to figure out how to get the PV, load, battery and grid stats from Solar Assistant. I'm hoping MQTT in SA will help me with this, but if anyone has any pointers on where to start that'd be great. I'm not familiar with MQTT but I'm hoping I can leverage the Grafana and InfluxDB I already have to build dashboards and not need to install HA....

Thanks!
 
I am having the hardest time trying to get ESPhome to work with an esp8266 and a project to connect to the junctek shunt.
Electronically everything is working fine as I can read raw data out of the juncteck
monitor into a PC but I just don't understand enough about yaml files and all that other stuff to make head nor tail of the project on GitHub. Are there any kind souls that can help me out with this?
Gotten any further with this? Ive managed to get my epever inverter working with home assistant now, very happy, but not tried any esp stuff yet..
 
Yes I seem to have cracked it, not totally sure how though. I could setup a device, see it fine for a minute and then it would go offline according to HA.
2 main issues were my network does not do mDNS properly, this might be because I have a wireless repeater in the garage to better cover that area and I also use it as a wired port for the HA PC. There is a setting in HA to use IP instead of mDNS, but I am buggered if I can find it again.
I also set a static IP for the esp device in it's config.
 
Yes I seem to have cracked it, not totally sure how though. I could setup a device, see it fine for a minute and then it would go offline according to HA.
2 main issues were my network does not do mDNS properly, this might be because I have a wireless repeater in the garage to better cover that area and I also use it as a wired port for the HA PC. There is a setting in HA to use IP instead of mDNS, but I am buggered if I can find it again.
I also set a static IP for the esp device in it's config.
Can i ask what steps you have taken to get it working? Thanks ?
 
Hey all!

I thought I would share my Home Assistant dashboard that I'm using on a cheap Samsung A7 pad. I am using it for smart home applications, but also monitoring my:

- Mains power and Sub-Panel (As a deduct reading) using ESPhome and 2 sets of CT clamps.
- 2 LV6548's, and Victron smart shunt using Solar Assistant.
- Finally after all this time!... an easy way to monitor my JK-BMS 2amp balancer using ESPhome (Bluetooth Version install) that I found here.

The JK-BMS monitoring was the last piece of the puzzle and I have screwed around for many many hours to only be disappointed until now.
You can see in the picture showing my power wall I am monitoring the Voltage of the pack, the Average cell voltage, the delta cell Voltage, and if the pack is balancing or not.
You can monitor each individual cell if you want as well, but I don't see a need to do that. If I see that the delta cell voltage is going out of whack I can hit the basement and inspect things closer if I need too. I could also bring up the app to check cell voltages but it's much nicer to glance at a screen!

Enjoy!
Dan
Did you install Grafana on your Home assistant?
 
I took this to the extreme with dedicated touchscreens around my house... all the basic info I need to see things are working properly!

2F43A17F-E7DE-4442-A028-1981FC536AE6.jpeg

Rather than hijack this thread, I decided to dedicate a thread to showing how I did it.
 
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