Solar Assistant vs. Home Assistant
- Thread starter cmack
- Start date
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
SA has no notifications as yet. Configurable notifications are on their list for inclusion in a future release.
I use HA to send our phones notifications for various things, including when the grid is offline, back online, amongst other more mundane things like when the washing machine or dryer have finished a load.
From their website:
The data throughput to do per second storage is minimal, so the logging limitation is mostly about not consuming storage. A Pi will process megabytes/s of video data, so storing a few numbers every second is trivial.
The data throughput to do per second storage is minimal, so the logging limitation is mostly about not consuming storage. A Pi will process megabytes/s of video data, so storing a few numbers every second is trivial.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
With a single inverter and just a shunt for battery data, my SD card has used up 8% of a 32 GB card (~2.6 GB) over two years and a bit.
Add more than one inverter and a battery stack with cell data, and it would add up pretty quickly I'd imagine.
Reminded me, just did a backup of it. My HA data is automatically backed up but the native SA backup requires a manual trigger.
I think the data on Solar Assistant is within 1-2 seconds of it actually happening, they only log at 10s interval into the DB. Some of the metrics, like kWh consumptions were only summed once every 24h before, they just changed that to be summed hourly. I implemented my own integral sensor in HA to do the summing and it works fine.
Why do you need data more often than what MQTT feeds into Home Assistant? There isn't a whole lot you can/should do faster than the ~3.5 seconds per MQTT packet that is received.
Also note that Home Assistant only saves every data point for 10 days by default, then it only saves min/max/average values in historical data.
Again, why do you need more granular data?
I've had this setup for a while and the worst part of Solar Assistant is the abysmal WiFi implementation on the Raspbery Pi and the lack of static IP address. I (hopefully) fixed both of those issues so I expect this thing to be super reliable going forward.
Why do you need data more often than what MQTT feeds into Home Assistant? There isn't a whole lot you can/should do faster than the ~3.5 seconds per MQTT packet that is received.
Also note that Home Assistant only saves every data point for 10 days by default, then it only saves min/max/average values in historical data.
Again, why do you need more granular data?
I've had this setup for a while and the worst part of Solar Assistant is the abysmal WiFi implementation on the Raspbery Pi and the lack of static IP address. I (hopefully) fixed both of those issues so I expect this thing to be super reliable going forward.
Just set a static dhcp (reserve) on your router. I do that for SA, HA and other devices.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
You set that in your router, not the RPi.
I connect mine by ethernet anyway, I try to avoid Wi-Fi where I can.
Except that I prefer my static addresses to be of a different range than DHCP ones. Netgear's Orbi is pretty crappy with DHCP in general, so I much prefer true static addresses. I did manage to set it on the raspberry Pi eventually so I'm fine now, I'm crossing my fingers to see if the wired ethernet finally fixes my other dropouts.
Sweet. Notifications coming this month. Hopefully.....SA has no notifications as yet. Configurable notifications are on their list for inclusion in a future release.
I use HA to send our phones notifications for various things, including when the grid is offline, back online, amongst other more mundane things like when the washing machine or dryer have finished a load.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
I've learned not to get hopes up as projected feature timelines tend to be pretty rubbery.
The limitation for logging data is most likely due to the communications speed with the inverter. My two options are RS485 at 9600 baud, or WiFi, which, for some reason is even slower (likely because it's also using a 9600 baud connection, but then sending it over WiFi).
ESPHome lets me tune how often it queries every register, but I haven't spent much time yet tuning that. Even so, you can't pull many registers / second at 9600 baud.
Edit: And this is an example of what I like about Homeassistant:
ESPHome lets me tune how often it queries every register, but I haven't spent much time yet tuning that. Even so, you can't pull many registers / second at 9600 baud.
Edit: And this is an example of what I like about Homeassistant:
wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
Just curious which Pi you used?
wpns
Solar Joules are catch and release
I’m just starting this journey, any chance you are using Python and can share some basic subscription code? I can see parameters with:
mosquitto_sub -h sa.geekho.com -p 1883 -v -t ‘#’
But the code at:
How to Use MQTT in Python with Paho Client
Learn to use MQTT in Python with Paho Client, the easy way! Our step-by-step tutorial will have you up and running in no time with this popular IoT protocol.
Solved it: Paho v2 breaks all the old code (and many examples on the Internet), and V1 doesn't work with newer examples.
and apt for Debian Bookworm has 1.6.1-1
apt remove python3-paho-mqtt
git clone https://github.com/eclipse/paho.mqtt.python.git
cd paho.mqtt.python
pip install -e . --break-system-packages <yeah, I know, YMMV>
Now the sample code from:
Last edited:
I’m planning 2-Sol Ark 15ks and want to get that info into Home Assistant. The main item I need is grid on or off. When the grid goes down, I need that info to trigger in HA load shedding to the span panel I plan to install. Can someone confirm you get that info in HA with the Solar Assistant and HA integration?
Yes I know Span can automate this, but only if you purchase the batteries they support. I’m trying to get around this limitation.
Yes I know Span can automate this, but only if you purchase the batteries they support. I’m trying to get around this limitation.
solaruser120
New Member
I do something similar with the EG4 18kPV by tracking the grid side voltage to detect brownouts and grid power loss in home assistant using a USB to RS485 interface. There is a copy of the Sol Ark modbus register map posted on this forum and it looks like there's a holding register 152 labeled "Grid side voltage L1-L2" and register 194 "Grid side relay status" that might be useful.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
It will depend on what data the Sol Ark supplies to Solar Assistant but I'd imagine that it would have AC input voltage and probably grid frequency. You can use those to set up an automation.
Mine tracks a few things from which an appropriate trigger can be based:
e.g. I have an automation to message my phone when the grid is offline:
Code:
alias: Notification - GRID OFFLINE
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.grid_voltage
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 10
below: 10
condition: []
action:
- service: notify.mobile_app_myphone
data:
message: GRID OFF-LINE
title: GRID STATUS ALERT
- service: input_boolean.turn_off
data: {}
target:
entity_id: input_boolean.grid_status
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