diy solar

diy solar

solar assistant and rasberry pi

Just received it Thursday and installed it last night Saturday. Fantastic!
I'm using it with parallel MPP 3048's.
I love the granularity of the data. And lots of it.
I still have to figure out how to connect a jbd BMS to it. But solar assistant does have what they call emulated BMS where the software does a type of coulomb counting.
I REALLY LIKE IT.
Value for $150.
 
TomC4306 said:
Just received it Thursday and installed it last night Saturday. Fantastic!
I'm using it with parallel MPP 3048's.
I love the granularity of the data. And lots of it.
I still have to figure out how to connect a jbd BMS to it. But solar assistant does have what they call emulated BMS where the software does a type of coulomb counting.
I REALLY LIKE IT.
Value for $150.
Click to expand...
Were does the Solar Assistant app come from, The PI itself? I do not have the internet out were my system is at,
 
It's preloaded on an SD card that is already installed in the pi.

I attached the little power brick to my bus bars (48v system), attached the USB cable from inverter to pi, and then followed the instructions. Really only 4 or 5 settings and steps.
The pi creates a hotspot first (the only little bump was not turning off mobile data on my phone). Log into hotspot, give it MY house wifi settings (ssid and password), bang, done. Turn mobile data on my phone back on.

Then, if you 'register' it with Solar assistant, you can see into your system from the interwebs as well as locally on your house wifi.
 
TomC4306 said:
But solar assistant does have what they call emulated BMS where the software does a type of coulomb counting.
Click to expand...
This feature is nice (I use it) but...

1. it relies on the accuracy of your inverter's current and voltage measurements, and these can be somewhat flakey, especially at low loads/charge levels.

2. it will also perform a step wise adjustment as soon as your system touches the 30% and 80% SOC voltage values you enter in the set up for this feature, so it can be a bit jumpy with that because those voltages do not account for expected voltage variability based on load (or charging).

As such I would not want to be reliant on it, e.g. for automated control of loads or other systems.

Pierre told me he was probably going to try to improve that feature to just be based on coulomb count and not use the voltage settings but there is nothing in his upcoming release notes about it.
 
Last edited:
Skid said:
He recommends both equally.
Click to expand...
When I originally enquired with him (August 2021) his response was:
We sell the PI 3B+ instead of 4B as it's more than fast enough and actually has less problems. Some inverters push power back via USB cable which causes the PI4 not to boot at all if you connect more than one inverter.
Click to expand...
Perhaps these issues have been addressed and no longer cause such problems.

I have the 3B+ and it's plenty fast, response on the local network is near enough to instant, and even the response via remote server is very quick.

Bigblockcutlass123 said:
Were does the Solar Assistant app come from, The PI itself? I do not have the internet out were my system is at,
Click to expand...
To purchase you can either download it to install on your own Pi or you can buy a Pi with it preconfigured. The Pi needs to be dedicated to Solar Assistant and not used for other things.

You don't need internet for it to operate but it will require a local IP network (wifi/ethernet) to use. You access it via a browser on your computer, tablet or phone. To make things easier, I assigned it a static lease in my wifi router and gave it a name. That way you won't "lose" it if your local network reboots and it assigns a different local IP address to the Pi.

If you download it to your own Pi (which of course means you do have an internet connection) then you will also need that internet connection to complete the activation process. The pre-configured Pi is already activated and so is probably the easiest path for a set up without any internet access. You may also need to buy a Pi power supply suitable for where you are.
 
With the Voltronics inverter integration.. does it allow the ability to turn the inverter off and save 60watts per hour, like when I go to bed? I use the Victron blue tooth app to turn off everything in bed at night and the Victron only uses 13 watts overhead. I have a MPP 5048 just sitting around because I don't want it wasting 60w. I plan on setting it up when there's more sun, but now I can extend my battery time by hours using a small Victron and love the bluetooth ability to turn it off

Any way I can do this with Solar Assistant and Voltronics?
 
I bought a raspberry pi 400 today. Put the sd card in and found out how it gets the software on the receiving device. I can see the growatt and Victron shunt in the setting. Pierre said I could use it for 30 days without registering it till my full pi gets here in the mail. Right now it will not show any info on anything because I believe it is not registered. I have mentioned how many time's I do not have Wifi to him. Also it looks like the controls for the growatt are still not there like he said. What I keep seeing is that the one I bought complete will still needs to be registered. Mine is showing not registered on there web site . What is the freeking deal with everything Wifi or blue tooth.
 
Bigblockcutlass123 said:
What is the freeking deal with everything Wifi or blue tooth.
Click to expand...
It doesn't need to be wifi (it could for instance be ethernet), but it does need to be on a local network.

It's a system designed to enable monitoring and management away from the physical installation, that's the point of it.

Bigblockcutlass123 said:
Also it looks like the controls for the growatt are still not there like he said.
Click to expand...
Which version of firmware are you running? Growatt control was only introduced in version 2021-12-17 released just a few days ago. If you are running an earlier version you may need to run the updater in the configuration menu.
 
wattmatters said:
It doesn't need to be wifi (it could for instance be ethernet), but it does need to be on a local network.

It's a system designed to enable monitoring and management away from the physical installation, that's the point of it.


Which version of firmware are you running? Growatt control was only introduced in version 2021-12-17 released just a few days ago. If you are running an earlier version you may need to run the updater in the configuration menu.
Click to expand...
Looks like I got the older version. To again, I need wifi to update it witch I don't have. I don't have ethernet. What I can do is take the unit up town to a place that does. But it won't be plugged in to my inverter or victron shunt.
 
Bigblockcutlass123 said:
Don't have that option on my phone. Phone company what's more money for that.
Click to expand...
First, not sure why you bought it...

That said, you're misunderstanding the words. When you plug in solar assistant raspberry pi, the pi becomes a hotspot. Then, when you look at your phone, and look for available networks, solar assistant is one of the available networks that you can allow your cell phone to log into. You're not turning your phone into a hotspot. It's the other way around.
 
I had to go to my local Library and use there Wifi to get it register it and down load the newest file. Could not go to any places like McDonalds or Wendy's....ect. because there is a link to a user agreement.
It is working now. It is talking to my Growatt and Victron shunt just fine. It also has very basic controls over the inverter. Am using a laptop at this time to communicate to the Raspbarry Pi over wfi. Also my Cell Phone or Tablet will do either blue tooth or Wifi. It pulls the the software to display the information though the internet browser off the PI.
I seems to work pretty good, Played with it for wile this morning. It would be better If I was able to just hook the PI up to my 32 monitor out in that building with a mouse and use it. What is going to happen is, I will be using a second PI to hook up to that monitor.
Right now this one is on there 30 day trail. The one I bought from South Africa will be here maybe next week and will have to take that to the library to update it for the growatt controls. $50 for the software is not bad, I did not feel $210 was that bad for whole kit shipped because most PI kits were pushing $150, anyplace cheaper were sold out.
 
That's the route I was going to go, but because the supplies of the Pi vary widely he suggested I source one then buy the software.
 
Bigblockcutlass123 said:
It is working now. It is talking to my Growatt and Victron shunt just fine. It also has very basic controls over the inverter. Am using a laptop at this time to communicate to the Raspbarry Pi over wfi. Also my Cell Phone or Tablet will do either blue tooth or Wifi. It pulls the the software to display the information though the internet browser off the PI
Click to expand...
Glad you got it working and can at least start to see whether it's functionally what you need.
 
Skid said:
That's the route I was going to go, but because the supplies of the Pi vary widely he suggested I source one then buy the software.
Click to expand...
Late February is the expected arrival of new stocks of Pi4 8gb. Expect they will go quick too since they run linux amazingly well and if the Solar Assistant doesn't work out you will still have a very capable little pc.
 
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