Raspberry Pi 400

[rhino]

This seems like a really cool idea to reduce clutter of having a system to monitor your RE system (assuming your system doesn't require proprietary and/or Windows software). All you need is to connect a display.

Buy a Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit – Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi 400 is your complete personal computer, built into a compact keyboard. Featuring a quad-core 64-bit processor, 4GB of RAM, wireless networking, dual-display output, and 4K video playback, as well as a 40-pin GPIO header, it's the most powerful and easy-to-use Raspberry Pi computer yet.

www.raspberrypi.org

 

[Craig]

I use these things for lots of jobs. I usually run them headless from my pc or phone.

 

[Steve_S]

That is a long overdue idea that Raspbery Pi Org should have thought of quite a while back. Sadly they seriously dropped the ball with this. There is NO PROVISION for M2.data or for a 2.5" SSD to be contained within the casing. It really would not have taken much to add that facility into the casing with the keyboard. Having to hang an external drive to a USB port works but it is a PITA for many people.

Luckily, the DeskPi Pro is out and addresses these needs Really Well and am now waiting for my shipment. If only there were more options for Raspi + HDD/SSD within a single casing but there are only 3 so far.

Link to DeskPi Pro for anyone interested.
DeskPi Pro Set-top Box For Raspberry Pi 4-Preoder! – DeskPi Store

 

[solardiy]

I wrote up an article recently about my experiences with using a Raspberry Pi to collect metrics and store them in an open source time-series database called InfluxDB. Some Python code that communicates with the modbus interface on your charge controller.

I have one Raspberry Pi 3 B+ connected via RS-485 to the charge controller.
I have a separate Raspberry Pi 3 B+ that simply runs the InfluxDB storage engine.
The device connected to the charge controller simply writes data points to the InfluxDB engine.

Capture and Analyze Solar Power Generation Metrics with Python and InfluxDB - Trevor Sullivan

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working on building out a solar energy harvesting and storage solution. This solution involves several components, including solar panels, a solar charge controller, and battery storage. All of these components work together to gather energy from the...

trevorsullivan.net

Here's what my metrics dashboard looks like.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1319732073498816512

 

[rin67630]

This seems like a really cool idea to reduce clutter.

If I'd use a raspberry Pi to monitor my systems, I'd need no keyboard, no mouse and no display.
All my Raspberries run headless, and i have a dozen of them...

 

[Steve_S]

I wrote up an article recently about my experiences with using a Raspberry Pi to collect metrics and store them in an open source time-series database called InfluxDB. Some Python code that communicates with the modbus interface on your charge controller.

I have one Raspberry Pi 3 B+ connected via RS-485 to the charge controller.
I have a separate Raspberry Pi 3 B+ that simply runs the InfluxDB storage engine.
The device connected to the charge controller simply writes data points to the InfluxDB engine.

Capture and Analyze Solar Power Generation Metrics with Python and InfluxDB - Trevor Sullivan

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working on building out a solar energy harvesting and storage solution. This solution involves several components, including solar panels, a solar charge controller, and battery storage. All of these components work together to gather energy from the...

trevorsullivan.net

Here's what my metrics dashboard looks like.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1319732073498816512

You may want to have a peak at this thead running here: There is more to just the Chargery RS232 interface

Chargery rs232 interface

So when I saw the Chargery I saw it had 2 phone jack style inputs that I thought 1 would be used for the rs232 connection. Now that I have i t i find out that rs232 uses com3 which is simply 2 wires. from what I can find rs232 needs at least 3 wires ground TX and RX. Is it safe to assume...

diysolarforum.com

 

[solardiy]

Huh, that sounds like it has a different interface from my charge controller. I'm using the EPSolar Tracer 3210an, and have a Tracer 10420an on the way for more capacity. These things have a RS-485 modbus interface via a single RJ-45 connector. I haven't seen any with two phone jacks yet.

I wish I could do Bluetooth, since the Raspberry Pi devices have built-in Bluetooth radios, but I would have had to buy the Bluetooth add-on for the EPSolar controllers.

 

[rin67630]

Here's what my metrics dashboard looks like.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1319732073498816512

Here is what my metrics dashboard looks like:

It is a solar powered environmental noise measuring station.
It all runs on a single ESP8266 that cost less than 4$.
Battery monitoring and environmental noise monitoring

I am currently extracting the solar part of the whole project and will provide;
a) a plain solar monitor with a bench of statistics for existing SCCs,
b) the above + MQTT functionality to plain buck converters...

The total own consumption incl WiFi connectivity is 0,5W.

 

[solardiy]

That's awesome @rin67630! What are you using to build the graphs and store the metrics data?

 

[rin67630]

That's awesome @rin67630! What are you using to build the graphs and store the metrics data?

I am just using the cloud services of thinger.io You can sign up for up to two devices free of charge.
It is however not very Raspberry-friendly: it provides C++ interconnection only. For an ESP8266 it is however exactly the right thing to go.
(psst: the ESP has a Modbus library... without extra hardware)
You can see my dashboard live here: RIN67630's dashboard live
A 100W panel + 200AH lead acid Batteries feeds a 6W instrumentation + router payload.