Solar Assistant Alarm Email

[BarracudaBob]

Put 2 solar assistants on a ethernet switch with home assistant green and still didn't get SA to see HA MQTT

 

[MattMan119]

Put 2 solar assistants on a ethernet switch with home assistant green and still didn't get SA to see HA MQTT
View attachment 252155

Configure the MQTT client in Services - Your configing a broker.. SA has its own broker.. If you need to connect the two that is another story ..


Matt

 

[BarracudaBob]

 

[MattMan119]

Your still looking in add-ons.. it is a service

 

[BarracudaBob]

You make a great teacher, thank you!

Eco-Worthy online via Solar Assistant #2

 

[MattMan119]

You make a great teacher, thank you!

Eco-Worthy online via Solar Assistant #2
View attachment 252182

Glad to help ..

 

[shopman]

From the Solar Assistant website, they have alerts like this as a future item. It was supposed to happen in late 2024 but who knows now

From the Solar Assistant website, they have alerts like this as a future item. It was supposed to happen in late 2024 but who knows now.

They’ve been promising “alerts” as a coming feature for the past two years. It never happens and they finally removed that coming feature in the latest beta release. Home assistant via MQTT is the answer. There’s much more data available than displayed via Solar Assistant alone.

 

[MattMan119]

They’ve been promising “alerts” as a coming feature for the past two years. It never happens and they finally removed that coming feature in the latest beta release. Home assistant via MQTT is the answer. There’s much more data available than displayed via Solar Assistant alone.

The ability to put the stats altogether anyway you want and put what is important to you here and there is what I like.

 

[wpns]

Indeed. Code to ‘log all the data points’ is so much easier with MQTT. Perfect place to consolidate all the latest data without worrying about syncing up multiple processes. Just read the broker, there’s the latest data.
Plus if you want to alert on overcurrent or something, you can just subscribe to the amp reading and get advised immediately of any changes to it.

 

[BarracudaBob]

Can Home Assistant receive information from two brokers (Solar assistants) I have one on the EG4 LiFEPower4 batteries & Inverters AND the other is connected to JBD BMS's. It looks like it only wan'ts to talk to one. Currently I have the MQTT Client it looking at a IP.

 

[wpns]

Can Home Assistant receive information from two brokers (Solar assistants) I have one on the EG4 LiFEPower4 batteries & Inverters AND the other is connected to JBD BMS's. It looks like it only wan'ts to talk to one. Currently I have the MQTT Client it looking at a IP.

Isn’t there a way to tie two brokers together? I’ve slept since then, but I seem to remember that being fairly easy to do.

 

[TechRider]

As long as you do the initial setup correctly, you could theoretically use a bunch of different SA's to a single Home Assistant. I wanted to use a couple of different MQTT sources so I had to install the broker but that required me changing the config. The default SA config has you install it in a way that limits it to just the SA connection. The "Alternate" way allows you to use something like Mosquitto broker to accept multiple connections. That's how I'm setup now and I have MQTT events from 3 different sources in HA.

 

[BarracudaBob]

As long as you do the initial setup correctly, you could theoretically use a bunch of different SA's to a single Home Assistant. I wanted to use a couple of different MQTT sources so I had to install the broker but that required me changing the config. The default SA config has you install it in a way that limits it to just the SA connection. The "Alternate" way allows you to use something like Mosquitto broker to accept multiple connections. That's how I'm setup now and I have MQTT events from 3 different sources in HA.

I tried that in the beginning and it work. Having two sets of batteries will require this. Sounds like a project for another day.

 

[MattMan119]

Isn’t there a way to tie two brokers together? I’ve slept since then, but I seem to remember that being fairly easy to do.

Yes you can I do it .. with SA Venus and HA … I can post you some direction if you like… internet information is so lacking on this one took me days to get it all working

 

[MattMan119]

1) You have to understand each broker is a different MQTT server
2) HA can connect to one .. but everything needs to be brought together into one server
3) So we use the MQTT broker (server) in add-ons to host all the content from all others brokers.

So to configure it you need to make sure it is active and that you have a configuration folder location:


All the ssh keys should be setup and by default secure your connection with HA ..

You will need to configure a "Person" to allow login (nice that the add-in uses the same password setup as HA)


Now you need to configure the MQTT Broker to connect to other brokers and bring there content into this instance:
If you used the folder above in my example you can find this in the share folder you will need to make the mosquitto folder



and you will need to create a file called : mosquitto.conf in the mosquitto folder. I had to use sudo to have permissions to do this.

Here is the contents on my file:

----------------------------------------------------------------itto
connection smb1
address 192.168.1.138
remote_username sauser
remote_password Pa33W0rd!
topic sa-/# both 2
topic homeassistant/# both 2

connection vmb2
address 192.168.1.5
topic N/# both 2
topic R/# both 2
----------------------------------------------------------------2

This points to two servers to merge into my HA MQTT Broker

1) SA -- i bring all the content from SA and the configuration content for HA channels -- I make them update both ways (coming and going to allow the write functions to continue working)
2) Venus - I bring in my Venus (Victron) server to add that content and make available in HA ..

This can be repeated as many times as you need.. BUT

BUT

Do not make all channels both ways, or all content will be duplicated on all brokers in your entire system.. It will work, BUT it will create a LOT of traffic moving every message from every server and duplicating it on every other server..

Questions let me know!

PS> If you're setting on a Venus server for Victron devices, let me know there is a time-out ping you have to do to keep things running and prevent Victron from going into bandwidth saving mode and stop sending updates.

 

[wattmatters]

Can Home Assistant receive information from two brokers (Solar assistants)

Yes, I have two separate Solar Assistant RPis communicating with HA via MQTT.

I also have my car communicating with HA via MQTT. It was the latter integration which showed that I couldn't use the the MQTT set up the way Solar Assistant has it in their guide. This option works perfectly fine if it's the only instance of using MQTT with HA, but it has limitations when done this way.

If you have set it up as per the SA user guide, then what happens is SA becomes the MQTT broker and that makes life a bit tricky and limiting as far as using MQTT for other things in HA.

What's needed is to set up an MQTT broker in HA and then to connect the instances of SA MQTT to that. MattMan has it covered above although it would be nice to point you to a simple to follow guide.

 

[jm121189]

I have Home Assistant send my phone alerts triggered by whatever conditions I set, e.g.:

View attachment 251947

I'd REALLY like to know you set this up! I've been trying for a while with no success.

Basically, what notification service are you using in HA?

 

[MattMan119]

I'd REALLY like to know you set this up! I've been trying for a while with no success.

Basically, what notification service are you using in HA?

I used this



Now the problem may be that the devices they are sent to are the devices that are connected to home assistant ..

So when you add the event: Add the action (as seen below: and select notifications)



Then select what device to send it to:



Hope this helps let me know if you have problems ..

 

[wattmatters]

Basically, what notification service are you using in HA?

You will need HA app installed on your mobile device.

I use the UI to set up a simple notification, the yaml looks like this;

alias: Notification - GRID OFFLINE
description: ""
mode: single
triggers:
  - entity_id: sensor.grid_voltage
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 10
    below: 10
    trigger: numeric_state
conditions: []
actions:
  - data:
      message: GRID OFF-LINE
      title: GRID STATUS ALERT
    action: notify.mobile_app_alex_s_iphone
  - data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.grid_status
    action: input_boolean.turn_off

I have various notifications, e.g. when our washing machine or dryer finishes my wife and I both get notifications.

I have them for altering me to potential over load scenarios, when the grid goes down and when it returns, if my water heater (which uses a PV diverter) hasn't had a full heating cycle for more than a few days.