solar assistant and rasberry pi

[Bigblockcutlass123]

Next question: Anyone know where to buy a raspberry pi 3 or 4 these days?

Amazon has them. I went right from the raspberry pi website and bought one back in Christmas

 

[jberger]

If you have a local MicroCenter, they have been getting good stock fairly regularly.
They quit selling them online, so you have to go to the store, but I got a couple of them 3 weeks ago in Georgia AND picked up a 3d Printer on sale for $99.
It's worth it if you have one around your area.

 

[DanF]

I have both my off-grid and grid tied systems reporting in a Home Assistant dashboard.

View attachment 88460

Looks Great!

 

[hotrod]

Looks Great!

Hi Dan I just purchased the solar assistant License but haven't downloaded it yet, I wanted to ask you a question about being able to view my solar from my phone or my computer is there a app to download on my phone and computer or how do you view on other items like my phone and computer

 

[wattmatters]

Hi Dan I just purchased the solar assistant License but haven't downloaded it yet, I wanted to ask you a question about being able to view my solar from my phone or my computer is there a app to download on my phone and computer or how do you view on other items like my phone and computer

As long as you have a browser on your phone, tablet or computer and have access to the internet, then you can view your SolarAssistant live and historical data via the SA portal - it appears exactly the same as if connecting to the local IP address. You just need to register your SA system - it's included as part of the purchase. This assumes of course your SA Raspberry Pi has an internet connection.

e.g. here's my phone SA dashboard when connected directly via LAN:



and via the internet:



Because of the inverter controls built into SA, I can remotely change the inverter's settings if needed.

e.g. last night we had a grid outage so I flipped my transfer switch over to backup and when I was in bed I used the option to temporarily change the inverter's operating mode from SBU to Utility First, so that once power came back the inverter would automatically stop drawing from the battery and instead pass grid power through.

 

[Don B. Cilly]

Solar Assistant seems to me a product of the Complicating Simple Things Department (of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation), a spawn of the well-known 19th century Circumlocution Office. You have to have a totally useless (aptly named in this case ;·) Raspberry. Instead of compiling the software for useful OSs (like Linux - for which it's already written, but compiled for ARM), or even mildly annoying ones like OSX, or really annoying ones like MS Windows, we have to have a dedicated computer to run... just that?

Pardon the rant, but absurdity is really getting to me lately
-

 

[jberger]

You think it would be simpler to have to maintain an OS and the App, rather than just a single image file that auto-updates?
I don't think Pierre could have made it any easier, flash an SD card with the supplied ISO, then stick the card in the Pi, that is it.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on Pi devices or with Solar Assistant, his work is just top notch and it shows in the implementation.

 

[Don B. Cilly]

But they wouldn't have to maintain any OS, would they? The OS maintainers do that.
So why would I want to have another computer when I can just use mine? I never switch it off.
What I switch on and off is the external monitor. Without that, it uses less than 10W.

I reboot it maybe once a week. So I would lose some two minutes of data acquisition, no big deal.
-

 

[timselectric]

Luckily, I don't need remote control of my system.
Just wanted remote monitoring. So, I'll just group the desired meters, and point one of my security cameras at them.
Problem solved.

 

[wattmatters]

Solar Assistant seems to me a product

which no one is forcing you to use or buy.

If you really want to use a different OS then go right ahead and develop one. Can't be any worse than the existing MS Windows app - Watchpower. That truly is awful.

Solar Assistant has transformed my mediocre cheap AIO inverter into a system with quite a decent and flexible management and monitoring system, and for not a lot of $.

 

[robby]

You think it would be simpler to have to maintain an OS and the App, rather than just a single image file that auto-updates?
I don't think Pierre could have made it any easier, flash an SD card with the supplied ISO, then stick the card in the Pi, that is it.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on Pi devices or with Solar Assistant, his work is just top notch and it shows in the implementation.

Yep Solar Assistant works very well and I like the fact that Pierre is constantly updating it.
The only thing that is missing now that is critical is a backup system for the database.

 

[radurus]

Did anyone had luck with other SBC than RPi?

I have an Odroid C2 (prettty close to RPi 4 performance) laying in a shelf and I can put it to work.

(DISCONTINUED)ODROID-C2 – ODROID

www.hardkernel.com

This does not have wifi but I have thumb wifi dongle that works.
Anyway I prefer using wired network.

I dropped an email to the dev and he told me it is not working on this SBC.

Since the SBC has a lot of not used potential, it would be nice to be able to install openHab on it as well.

Is threre any solution for me to download the OSimage and give it a try?

 

[Don B. Cilly]

I'm not disputing whether it works well or not.
What I dislike is the idea of having to use a dedicated device for it. Not necessary, expensive, and... slightly pig-headed IMHO.
I think we should really be given the choice - especially considering how easy it would be, at least for Debian-based Linux OSs.
-

 

[DanF]

The way I see it you are purchasing a license to use this software and not the software itself.. Whoever wrote it is protecting their hard work this way (Like it or not).
I wish it was freeware myself. It's not, but I get that.
There are many other programs out there that I personally have tried, but none of them that I have found are this easy and "just work" without flaws or constant crashing and are this intuitive.

JMO

 

[radurus]

So...
Is there any possibility to obtain the system image in order to try on different SBC (odroidC2 in my case)

I suppose the software will not run properly since it will not be tied to the cloud account.
I wish to try if the complete setup works: network communication, inverter communication.

I heard about 30 day trial.
How can I obtain it?

 

[wattmatters]

I think we should really be given the choice - especially considering how easy it would be, at least for Debian-based Linux OSs.

Seeing as it's so easy why not write your own?

Again, no one is forcing you to use this software.

 

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, of course no one is forcing me to use it. And of course I won't, if they force me to use an unnecessary, expensive, dedicated device.
Of their choice, mind you, because the Odroid cited above, e.g., is ARM-based, cheaper and better than the PI.

And I'm not saying it's easy to write, it's easy to port.
But then, they don't want to sell it, I'm not buying it, so hey :·/
-

 

[hotrod]

The way I see it you are purchasing a license to use this software and not the software itself.. Whoever wrote it is protecting their hard work this way (Like it or not).
I wish it was freeware myself. It's not, but I get that.
There are many other programs out there that I personally have tried, but none of them that I have found are this easy and "just work" without flaws or constant crashing and are this intuitive.

JMO

Hi Dan I wanna say thank you and this forum for posting your experience about the solar assistant software and the raspberry pi. I just purchased the software and a raspberry pi, and I have now got the system up and running with my 12kw growatt and I also connected my victron shunt to it that I had and wasn't using, I appsolutly am loving all the instant data on my whole system. I was having a lot of issues with the growatt dashboard on my computer and growatt never did figure out what was causing all my issue. So this is so much better than the data growatt was providing.

 

[Kornbread]

Does someone have a link to another 9-60v usb power supply similar to that that SolarAssistand offers for the Pi? Nothing wrong with ordering from the SolarAssistant website ... other than the $52 DHL shipping fee on a $19 item.

 

[timselectric]

That is why I haven't purchased it.