Sol-Ark + Solar Assistant + Home Assistant - Question for those who know

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

Yes that is what I’m looking for, I *think* I have it working but will need to see what happens at midnight tonight. Only thing I’m not loving about it thus far is that it only updates hourly on the hour

Mine updates every time the value increases, so yours should too.

 

[ddeatrich]

Yes that is what I’m looking for, I *think* I have it working but will need to see what happens at midnight tonight. Only thing I’m not loving about it thus far is that it only updates hourly on the hour

You have the exact same system as me. I read through and am also trying settings out on my home assistant. Would be great to have this worked out

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

wait... maybe not, you might be right that it only triggers once an hour.

 

[Watts Happening]

wait... maybe not, you might be right that it only triggers once an hour.

View attachment 168451

Yes I am seeing it update hourly, I still won’t know until tomorrow if it resets daily. I assume it will, but it still does the hourly updates which I’d certainly prefer much closer to real time

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

I'm seeing what looks like 5 minute increments to the energy meter, not sure why the template is once an hour. I'll try it with something that updates more frequently and see what happens.

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

Update your YAML with this, it will cause the template sensor to update every minute.

- sensor:
    - name: "Solar Production 123"
      icon: mdi:battery-charging-100
      unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
      state: "{{ states('sensor.daily_production_kWh') }}"
      attributes:
        attribute: "{{ now().minute }}"

 

[Watts Happening]

Update your YAML with this, it will cause the template sensor to update every minute.

- sensor:
    - name: "Solar Production 123"
      icon: mdi:battery-charging-100
      unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
      state: "{{ states('sensor.daily_production_kWh') }}"
      attributes:
        attribute: "{{ now().minute }}"

Oh boy, now I have to figure out how to edit my YAML lol!

Thank you for the input and help, it’s greatly appreciated!

 

[wattmatters]

Oh boy, now I have to figure out how to edit my YAML lol!

It's relatively easy with a file editor, the main thing to note is never restart HA after doing any YAML change unless you have checked the configuration is valid. That's an easy one button press check which was mentioned earlier in the thread.

See here for some:

Configuration.yaml

Configuring Home Assistant via text files.

www.home-assistant.io

 

[Watts Happening]

It's relatively easy with a file editor, the main thing to note is never restart HA after doing any YAML change unless you have checked the configuration is valid. That's an easy one button press check which was mentioned earlier in the thread.

See here for some:

Configuration.yaml

Configuring Home Assistant via text files.

www.home-assistant.io

Looks like I've got some learning to do, it's full of errors:

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

That is easily fixed. Take a look back at my prior post

Sol-Ark + Solar Assistant + Home Assistant - Question for those who know

Probably a super specific question here, but I'm tinkering with using Home Assistant to get all of our smart devices into a single app/control center. As I set up a new "dashboard" or "view" yesterday I added gauges to keep an eye on the pertinent solar data and I thought I was good to go, but...

diysolarforum.com

It's better to create a templates.yaml file to keep your config file clean, it's a preference of mine, but I've been coding in HA for years so I can save you a lot of headaches as the product matures by following a few tidy tips.

So your config file should look like this

# Loads default set of integrations. Do not remove.
default_config:

map:
  - default_zoom: 8

# Load frontend themes from the themes folder
frontend:
  themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes

automation: !include automations.yaml
script: !include scripts.yaml
scene: !include scenes.yaml
template: !include templates.yaml

Then in your templates.yaml file it should look like this

- sensor:
    - name: "Solar Production 123"
      icon: mdi:battery-charging-100
      unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
      state: "{{ states('YOUR SENSOR HERE') }}"
      attributes:
        attribute: "{{ now().minute }}"

Once you make those corrections that should fix the error and start you on the path to having a clean "manageable" configuration. Trust me once you get the taste, you'll be doing all sorts of custom sensors, the possibilities are endless.

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

My sensor started at zero at midnight, and it's updating by the minute, but the actual value from the Sol-Ark is only changing every hour, even though it's sending every few minute. The sensors are smart enough that they will only show movement when the value has changed. So if the Sol-Ark says 1.2 every 1 minute for an hour, the sensor will continue to read 1.2 until the value changes to 1.3 or greater.



Looking at the MQTT explorer you can see in the history, and the value is coming in every minute from Sol-Ark to SA to HA, but it's the same value over and over so in my case it appears to update on the hour. With more freqent changes the sensor should show more granual and timely updates.

 

[Quattrohead]

I've been coding in HA for years

Oh my, you have opened yourself up to a bunch of questions LOL. I'm good with hardware but pretty stupid with software. I have so many things I've tried to do and never got them to work.

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

Oh my, you have opened yourself up to a bunch of questions LOL. I'm good with hardware but pretty stupid with software. I have so many things I've tried to do and never got them to work.

Happy to help when I have the time.

 

[Watts Happening]

Alright, so I think I've followed along correctly, but now I don't know how to get it to display in a card, I tried making a gauge that displayed "solar production 123" and it says it's not a numeric value. Am I doing it wrong? (much appreciated).

 

[andrew-d]

Alright, so I think I've followed along correctly, but now I don't know how to get it to display in a card, I tried making a gauge that displayed "solar production 123" and it says it's not a numeric value. Am I doing it wrong? (much appreciated).

View attachment 168567

View attachment 168568

You probably need to add "| float" after the "states" call, to convert it to a number. Something like:

{{ states("deye_sunsynk_sol_ark_pv_energy") | float }}

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

Let us confirm we're talking about the same card type. This is the one you're using correct?



It's settings look similar to this image?


Does your entity for PV energy look exactly the same as this?

 

[Watts Happening]

It appears so:

 

[MaikaiLifeDIY]

@Watts Happening there is some sort of data type initialization going on with your entity.

For your entity, does it have a value?




On my system I don't have any PV hooked up, but initially when I tried to add the gauge card with the "sensor.deye_sunsynk_sol_ark_pv_energy" I got the same non-numeric issue. This specific sensor "sensor.deye_sunsynk_sol_ark_pv_energy" is an aggregate sensor provided by SA from data it gathers from the inverter, IE a computed value from SA.

I presume you're using SA as the MQTT broker, which makes things harder since you cannot see the MQTT messages coming from SA and intercept them to force a value for testing. I would suggest getting your HA/SA instance set up so that HA is the MQTT broker so you can read the messages.

These are the instructions from SA that guide you through this process.

Home Assistant broker setup with SolarAssistant

Configure Home Assistant to run an MQTT broker with a bridge reading from SolarAssistant.

solar-assistant.io

If you don't do this, it will be nearly impossible to see what is being sent and how frequently from SA to HA so you can diagnose and troubleshoot.

I'd be happy to coordinate a time with you to do a remote session and take a look with you, let me know if you're interested.