Off-grid Solar / Battery monitoring and control freeware

[cass3825]

I got the Chargery serial interface reading the Cell voltages and plotting them over time. Crazy to see what happens to the cell voltages and how they diverge so quickly when they are fully charged. You can see the Inverter shut off charging in the center of the image and the voltage spread converge. You can see how this can cause problems if you have one bad cell run rogue. I apply a load at the end and they pull back into line very quickly, but diverge again when the solar charger starts again.
Joe.
View attachment 13851

Can you elaborate on how you connected the Chargery to the Pi (USB-232 dongle or GPIO or?)?

 

[wikkum]

Hi Joe,

I'm trying to adjust the script to get it working on the Epever Ipower 1500W Inverter.
Do you have by any change info about the registers I need to use?

Thanks
Willem

 

[cass3825]

Can you elaborate on how you connected the Chargery to the Pi (USB-232 dongle or GPIO or?)?

Now that I have the Pi in hand, I assume the Chargery is connected to GPIO 15 (RXD).

Let the fun begin!

 

[BarkingSpider]

I connected via the USB port on the pi with an rs232 cable, it uses just 2 of the wires. Check your Chargery documentation for details.

Now that I have the Pi in hand, I assume the Chargery is connected to GPIO 15 (RXD).

Let the fun begin!

 

[cass3825]

Grafana 7.0.4 released today. Ok to use? If so, revise cheat sheet.

Also, should line 103 end in armhf.deb instead of arm7.deb?

Prometheus 2.19.1 released.

Lastly, node_exporter 1.0.1 is released.

 

[BarkingSpider]

Thanks for the update, I'm out of town for a few days, I'll update everything when i get home again, they old versions work fine. It's not critical to be running the very latest versions.
The pi 4 and zero are different architecture and different binaries, hence the different versions.
Did you get everything working ok?
Joe.

Grafana 7.0.4 released today. Ok to use? If so, revise cheat sheet.

Also, should line 103 end in armhf.deb instead of arm7.deb?

Prometheus 2.19.1 released.

Lastly, node_exporter 1.0.1 is released.

 

[cass3825]

Did you get everything working ok?
Joe.

Getting close. Struggling with Prometheus.yml file giving errors (mapping values not allowed) when checking with promtool. Is the file supposed to be in the /etc/ directory per line 140, or the /home/solar/ directory?

 

[BarkingSpider]

It's flexible, it by default looks in the directory you start Prometheus, but you can pass it a flag to override it.

I leave it on the/home/solar folder with the binary or make a logical link to it.

The yml file is very fussy about indentation, it must be exactly as i show it.
Hope this helps...

 

[cass3825]

yml file issue resolved (CR vs LF issue), "Server is ready to receive web requests."

On to node_exporter. One step closer!

 

[cass3825]

'node_load1' query from browser returning 'no data'

baby steps...

EDIT: resolved. I had hit <ctrl>C in order to launch node_exporter.

On to Grafana! tried skipping password change, but that redirects back to login page. Tried changing pw to solar, resulting in 'Unauthorized' popup.

 

[cass3825]

Able to skip password change and import recommended dashboard using Chromium on pi, but every gauge is reporting "Cannot read property 'result' of undefined"

 

[cass3825]

Imported dashboard is working! Getting very close to being ready to interface with Chargery & Tracer...

Thanks for all of the patience and guidance...

 

[cass3825]

All is well until I reboot the pi. Checking status of rc-local service, it looks like my permissions aren't set up correctly. Any ideas?

root@clem720pi:/home/solar# systemctl status rc-local.service
● rc-local.service - /etc/rc.local Compatibility
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service; enabled-runtime; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service.d
           └─debian.conf
           /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service.d
           └─ttyoutput.conf
   Active: active (exited) since Fri 2020-06-26 14:51:19 CDT; 3h 1min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-rc-local-generator(8)
    Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/rc-local.service

Jun 26 14:51:19 clem720pi systemd[1]: Starting /etc/rc.local Compatibility...
Jun 26 14:51:19 clem720pi systemd[1]: Started /etc/rc.local Compatibility.
Jun 26 14:51:19 clem720pi rc.local[481]: /etc/rc.local: 20: /etc/rc.local: /home/solar/restartSys.sh: Permission denied

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

/home/solar/restartSys.sh: Permission denied

Run 'chmod 755 /home/solar/restartSys.sh' and see if that works. My guess is the executable bit on the file isn't set.

 

[cass3825]

That was it, thanks!!! Day three of my adventure into Linux, its beginning to make sense.

Linux clem720pi 5.4.47-v7l+ #1322 SMP Wed Jun 17 17:58:52 BST 2020 armv7l
Inetd.Com QC server - all activity monitored and logged.
Last login: Fri Jun 26 18:17:02 2020 from 192.168.0.120
solar@clem720pi:~ $ sudo bash
root@clem720pi:/home/solar# ls
grafana_7.0.4_armhf.deb                 prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7
node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7         prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz
node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz  restartSys.sh
root@clem720pi:/home/solar# ls -l
total 106828
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40918384 Jun 25 02:17 grafana_7.0.4_armhf.deb
drwxr-xr-x 2 3434 3434     4096 Jun 16 08:19 node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8860170 Jun 16 08:19 node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 5 3434 3434     4096 Jun 25 12:31 prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 59594877 Jun 18 13:51 prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      199 Jun 26 13:46 restartSys.sh
root@clem720pi:/home/solar# chmod +x /home/solar/restartSys.sh
root@clem720pi:/home/solar# ls -l
total 106828
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40918384 Jun 25 02:17 grafana_7.0.4_armhf.deb
drwxr-xr-x 2 3434 3434     4096 Jun 16 08:19 node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8860170 Jun 16 08:19 node_exporter-1.0.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 5 3434 3434     4096 Jun 25 12:31 prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 59594877 Jun 18 13:51 prometheus-2.19.1.linux-armv7.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      199 Jun 26 13:46 restartSys.sh
root@clem720pi:/home/solar#

 

[cosmotherobot]

Hi Joe,

Didn't managed yet to get it working.
in row 201 and 207 it first gave an error, both rows was missing #
Installed the missing modules for Python except one.
Atm stuck on
Looking now how to get that installed in Python2.7

Willem

I'm stuck on " No module named pyepsolartracer.registers:" How did you fix this?

 

[wikkum]

I'm stuck on " No module named pyepsolartracer.registers:" How did you fix this?

You have to make sure you have the folder pyepsolartracer in /home/solar folder

you can get if from Github epsolar-tracer

 

[cass3825]

Struggling with Exar driver for USB-485 cable supplied with the Tracer. Not sure if I should be using driver version 1A per all of the github references, or 1C per Exar/MaxLinear's website. Regardless, no success with getting either to compile for kernel71.

 

[wikkum]

if it is the cable what is delivered with de Tracer, you should use the 1A driver version.
when all is installed you should have /dev/ttyXRUSB0.
Follow the instruction on: Github and all will be fine.
when you still have a issue do the TIP in line 32 and send the dmesg

 

[cosmotherobot]

You have to make sure you have the folder pyepsolartracer in /home/solar folder

you can get if from Github epsolar-tracer

Thank you! - that got rid of the error. In the meantime I had just commented that line out and the script seemed to run fine.