Solar Assistant - data logger

[marbella]

Never stated that Home Assistant had to run on a Pi.

If you want to learn about Home Assistant/Solar Assistant integration and the possibilities, start by searching this forum.

thank you, will start that tomorrow

 

[Kornbread]

thank you, will start that tomorrow

https://diysolarforum.com/threads/home-assistant-solar-monitoring-and-management.20728/

 

[Slvrsky07]

Hey all, I was wondering if you guys are able to still get into the command line via ssh or using the hdmi with keyboard? I am trying to have the Pi run a few other jobs besides just SA.
Also does anyone know where they save the definitions file for the inverters?

 

[Slvrsky07]

Here are the steps - please let me know if it works for you. This is all from memory and it's been a while so I may have missed a step. There are two prerequisites - (1) that you know how ssh keys work and how to generate and retrieve the public key you want to use to access the SA pi; (2) you know how to mount the SD card and modify its filesystem.

1. Mount the SD card with the solar assistant image on a Linux machine or something capable of read-write on ext4 file systems.
2. If you don't have an ssh key on your local machine, create one. Instructions vary by OS/ssh client but standard *nix systems you just run "ssh-keygen". Copy the contents of your public key.
3. Append the public key to /etc/updates.allow on the solar assistant image
4. Modify /etc/security/init.sh and comment out the following line by prefixing it with a '#':
if ! [[ $(cat /etc/updates.allow | wc -l) == 1 ]];then exit 1;fi
5. Put the SD card back into your Pi and boot it up.
6. ssh solar-assistant@<ip address of your pi> -p 2222 (tcp port 2222)

The code seems to be synced to the pi each time it starts up and is stored in shared memory so it's wiped on reboot. It's located in /dev/shm/grafana-sync. It's compiled Elixir code so you won't be able to do much with it. The influxdb data is located in /var/lib/influxdb and of course /var/log will have all the interesting log files. sudo also works password-less.

Has anyone tried using raspberry pi imager to write the SD card and use ssh and local account options?

 

[Slvrsky07]

Has anyone tried using raspberry pi imager to write the SD card and use ssh and local account options?

FYI, that doesn’t work. I am a little upset in my purchase of Solar-assistant. I do like how it functions when it’s running by itself. However, I don’t like how it locks you out of your own open source device and open source OS. The developer wouldn’t help with access either. It may be just me, but if you own the hardware of the computer, using a free open source OS with other free software running on it, you should have the ability to at least SSH into the other device functions. The Pi is capable of running that program and doing other things if they would enable the ability. I guess I’ll just have to look into something else that allows you do have more control such as H.A. I guess buyer beware if you want to use your computer for anything else besides that program.

 

[Lt.Dan]

I'm pretty sure SolarAssistant does not run on Raspberry Pi's native OS. SolarAssistant is its OWN OS. Therefore, it is not opensource, and SolarAssistant can do whatever they want with their own OS.

Theres enough people complaining about SD card failures due to too many read/writes (supposedly), and you want the Pi to do more on that card in the background?

 

[Slvrsky07]

I'm pretty sure SolarAssistant does not run on Raspberry Pi's native OS. SolarAssistant is its OWN OS. Therefore, it is not opensource, and SolarAssistant can do whatever they want with their own OS.

Theres enough people complaining about SD card failures due to too many read/writes (supposedly), and you want the Pi to do more on that card in the background?

No, it's Raspbian Buster it runs on. IF you mount the sd card with the SA image on it with another linux EXT4 system, you can see it has the same structure and also when you boot, it will show you it is Buster in the boot journal on the HDMI screen before their custom scripts run and lock it out.

 

[Slvrsky07]

I'm pretty sure SolarAssistant does not run on Raspberry Pi's native OS. SolarAssistant is its OWN OS. Therefore, it is not opensource, and SolarAssistant can do whatever they want with their own OS.

Theres enough people complaining about SD card failures due to too many read/writes (supposedly), and you want the Pi to do more on that card in the background?

Also I would be running the RPI off a USB instead of the SD card, there are ways to do this with the Pi. I have other Pis running web & sql servers for years without a storage write/re-write issues.

 

[Mila]

Dík

 

[Slvrsky07]

delete

 

[radurus]

I also like the way SA let you do stuff on the OS.... grin

In october 2022 it crashed without reason. I just tried to clone the card in order to move onto a bigger card.
when inserted in the RPi, it didn't start at all.
I lost 6 months of historic data.

Yesterday I thought it crashed again. No ping, no port open and I have it on wired connection just to avoid wifi issues.
I did not hope it will start again. After 3 -4 power-on's it ran and the history was there even if the http/mqtt service was not running
I turned it off and did a backup with AOMEI. Not sure if the backup works.

A backup feature is really mandatory (usb local, samba, cloud... whatever)
... and probably an auto-restart option after 5 minutes if pinging the DHCP server fails ot check if the httpweb/mqtt services are running and restart them if necessary.
So the product lacks some safety measures.
(I rely on the data from SA for the Home Assistant to power on DHW or heating buffer heater loads.
If the SA became unavailable, the battery SOC and PV power remains static on HA so that HA does not know the real SOC and PV power went down to and to command stop of the heater. That is my diverter)

SSH access would open a lot of options (backup script for example or install/configure samba service).
will it work? https://phoenixnap.com/kb/enable-ssh-raspberry-pi

for sure we need a user/pass login credentials.
Can we find the user from the OS or add a user in some configuration file?

 

[Slvrsky07]

I also like the way SA let you do stuff on the OS.... grin

In october 2022 it crashed without reason. I just tried to clone the card in order to move onto a bigger card.
when inserted in the RPi, it didn't start at all.
I lost 6 months of historic data.

Yesterday I thought it crashed again. No ping, no port open and I have it on wired connection just to avoid wifi issues.
I did not hope it will start again. After 3 -4 power-on's it ran and the history was there even if the http/mqtt service was not running
I turned it off and did a backup with AOMEI. Not sure if the backup works.

A backup feature is really mandatory (usb local, samba, cloud... whatever)
... and probably an auto-restart option after 5 minutes if pinging the DHCP server fails ot check if the httpweb/mqtt services are running and restart them if necessary.
So the product lacks some safety measures.
(I rely on the data from SA for the Home Assistant to power on DHW or heating buffer heater loads.
If the SA became unavailable, the battery SOC and PV power remains static on HA so that HA does not know the real SOC and PV power went down to and to command stop of the heater. That is my diverter)

SSH access would open a lot of options (backup script for example or install/configure samba service).
will it work? https://phoenixnap.com/kb/enable-ssh-raspberry-pi

for sure we need a user/pass login credentials.
Can we find the user from the OS or add a user in some configuration file?

I gave up on SA and their locked access.

I ended up making my own data logger which seems to work better for my needs.

 

[radurus]

I understand.
Good for you.
But not everybody has enough time to get familiar with linux, grafana, modbus protocol, etc.

 

[Slvrsky07]

I understand.
Good for you.
But not everybody has enough time to get familiar with linux, grafana, modbus protocol, etc.

I’m just letting you know I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a way in but I didn’t have any luck. One thing can be said about SA, they did their research on blocking ways to keep access out of their image. I do agree with you on it being BS to lock you out of a device you own just for their program to run. I’m also out the $53 from this experience.

There are a few other solar loggers on GitHub for free you may be able to easily have work for you. My inverter wasn’t supported but it was easy to figure out how to make my own from there.

 

[wattmatters]

I ended up making my own data logger which seems to work better for my needs.

Good for you. Absolutely zero chance of me ever doing that.
SA works, does pretty much all I need and the RPi they supplied is dedicated to it.

I would however echo the sentiment of automated backup being an important feature I hope they add before long.

 

[Slvrsky07]

I wasn’t saying that statement to be arrogant or bragging, I was stating there are other similar free options if you wanted to take the time to learn/do

 

[robby]

So it seems I was not alone in having the Load Gauge on the Dash Board getting stuck. The new Beta update says it fixes this issue.

 

[Alkaline]

can't it upload the data to google drive as a back up or something I"m considering this on my sungold 6500 inverter.

 

[wattmatters]

All my Solar Assistant data is copied into Home Assistant anyway, and my HA is backed up automatically. I would prefer native backup solution though.

So it seems I was not alone in having the Load Gauge on the Dash Board getting stuck.

Never had that issue, at least not that I can recall.

 

[robby]

All my Solar Assistant data is copied into Home Assistant anyway, and my HA is backed up automatically. I would prefer native backup solution though.


Never had that issue, at least not that I can recall.

It only happens on my Wall Mounted tablet.
The PC and my phone work fine. I thought it was the Tablet so I was getting ready to go through the Tablet and just by chance looked at his Change Log and saw the notation of a fix for it on the Beta release.