diy solar

diy solar

Solar Assistant Wish list, Bugs and Issues.

robby said:
Have you labled the USB converters? It should detect them the same way if you plug them in the same order and one at a time into the same ports after the Pi has booted. What version Pi are you using?
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I'm using a pi4 4gb, I have tried plugging the same inverters into the same ports, but it still randomized it somehow. It might be the order I plug them in though, ie, the first one that gets plugged in is now Inverter #1.

Idk why it doesn't just recognize the Serial # on the inverter and go off that.
 
I recall seeing something on solar assistants website about raspberry pi 4 not working. Which is why when you buy their service with the hardware it comes with a raspberry pi 3
 
I think he says the 3B has the best reliability but the 4 does work.
Mine did another lockup today. I had to reboot the Pi by plugging it out to get it back working.

So many variables to deal with. Is it my USB converter, is it the Pi Itself in general or just mine.
Is it a software bug? I am reading up on the Pi and finding that a lot of people seem to have issues with them when they are left running 24/7.
They are great hobby devices but do not seem to be reliable when run constantly.

Is the designer of Solar Assistant on this forum? If so what is his user name?
 
wattmatters said:
I assigned my HA Pi a static IP address in my router. No idea if it helps but it seems to have no issues re-establshing a connection when that's required.
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I had to do a home router reset, and now I'm having trouble reconnecting to my Solar Assistant. It comes up as a device in my router's list of connected devices but it's only showing it as having an IPV6 address, not an IPV4 address and I'll be buggered if I can work out how to connect to it.

I had this happen once before but for the life of me can't I remember how I sorted it.
 
My Pi stopped working today. Turns out that a boot file must have gotten corrupted. Got a replace and she is up and running but I think all my collected data may gone.
 
robby said:
My Pi stopped working today. Turns out that a boot file must have gotten corrupted. Got a replace and she is up and running but I think all my collected data may gone.
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My little understanding is that they are better to be running from a disk drive than an SD card. It'll be on my project list sometime in the months ahead to transition my Home Assistant Pi over to a drive. Not sure that's as feasible with the SA Pi.
 
It is true the SD card can only rewrite so many times. Long term an SSD would be ideal. I built one for fun with an Argon M.2 case and a 512gb WD M.2 SSD. The Argon case also gives full size HDMI ports and a built in power button. It's very nice and very fast, considering. Surfing the internet, you can barely tell you're on a Pi.
 
Following discussion here and elsewhere, another to add to my list:

9. Data / system backup and restore options.

Because the supplied RPi system is SD card based, this is not a long term reliable option for system and data. It will fail.

So I'd like to see options included in SA for the user to more readily backup their SA system and data (preferably an automated option), and of course a means to restore it.

For my Home Assistant RPi I have it auto backup everything 3 times a week to a Google drive.
 
Last edited:
wattmatters said:
Following discussion here and elsewhere, another to add to my list:

9. Data / system backup and restore options.

Because the supplied RPi system is SD card based, this is not a long term reliable option for system and data. It will fail.

So I'd like to see options included in SA for the user to more readily backup their SA system and data (preferably an automated option), and of course a means to restore it.

For my Home Assistant RPi I have it auto backup everything 3 times a week to a Google drive.
Click to expand...
Some sort of backup is a must. Personally cloud based would be nice or since it's already on my Network if it can map onto my NAS drive and backup onto that it would be better. I know he is trying to make it budget friendly to all users, so at the very least make it so it can backup to an attached USB stick. Chances of the USB stick and the SD card both dying is slim.
 
I agree on the back up.
Also a request HDMI output with a mouse to the pie without the need of wireless. Right now there is something wrong with the Pi they sent. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will not stay connected. It will drop out in less than a minute out of connection time. This thing has been a nightmare for me because of the Wi-Fi besed in internet-based unit. I do not have Wi-Fi at my house. And after this last update I'm really impressed with the software. My biggest complaint is the reliance on Wi-Fi.
 
Bigblockcutlass123 said:
I agree on the back up.
Also a request HDMI output with a mouse to the pie without the need of wireless. Right now there is something wrong with the Pi they sent. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will not stay connected. It will drop out in less than a minute out of connection time. This thing has been a nightmare for me because of the Wi-Fi besed in internet-based unit. I do not have Wi-Fi at my house. And after this last update I'm really impressed with the software. My biggest complaint is the reliance on Wi-Fi.
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It can be hooked up with a LAN cable but I have not seen anybody doing that.
I agree that the WiFi is pretty bad. It's not Solar Assistant that is at fault, it's the Pi itself.
It seems to be well documented that it can disconnect from WiFi and have problems reconnecting.
 
robby said:
It can be hooked up with a LAN cable but I have not seen anybody doing that.
I agree that the WiFi is pretty bad. It's not Solar Assistant that is at fault, it's the Pi itself.
It seems to be well documented that it can disconnect from WiFi and have problems reconnecting.
Click to expand...
I email Pier. He set my trial license as purchased, that I had on the PI 400 for at week before I got the pi from him. So far it is working perfectly today with one problem. The one I got from him, must have never been right and degraded over the last month so it wouldn't stay on WIFI for more than a minute.
 
Bigblockcutlass123 said:
I email Pier. He set my trial license as purchased, that I had on the PI 400 for at week before I got the pi from him. So far it is working perfectly today with one problem. The one I got from him, must have never been right and degraded over the last month so it wouldn't stay on WIFI for more than a minute.
Click to expand...
I assume your using different SD cards for each Pi? I am told his license only works with one Pi unit and changing Pi boards requires him to do a license shift.

So if your using two different SD cards are you sure that the one that is giving problems is not corrupted? I had Soooo many problems with mine after I unplugged the unit without a proper shutdown when it would not connect to WiFi. After that I had slow downs in data coming from the Pi. I had numerous times per day when the WiFi would not connect. It all lead to one final power off that completely corrupted the Database and the unit would not reboot. Since then I changed the SD card and did over the files from the Image file. It worked pretty good but I did notice one or two hangups in data coming in so I changed the power supply to a beefier model and so far it has been stable. Knocking wood right now as it has only been about 4 days but that's the best I have had in weeks.
 
My Wish list:
  1. Custom Solar PV gauge where we can set the max capacity of PV panel installed.
 
golazo said:
My Wish list:
  1. Custom Solar PV gauge where we can set the max capacity of PV panel installed.
Click to expand...
Yes I agree with that. Also I am not sure if it's just my iPhone but whenever I go into graphs the top half of the screen takes up 90% of the space and I can only see a sliver of the graph. I am not sure if it's a Safari Browser issue or a mobile platform issue.
 
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