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SOLVED. PowerUp LifePO BMS in Solar Assistant now working.

Jazzmonger

Jazzmonger

Hacker at heart
Joined
Apr 29, 2022
Messages
157
Location
Wilder, Idaho
I ordered 4 of these batteries from Ian at Watts247 and a Solar Assistant Image I put on a Pi4 I had lying around.

PowerUp by ESS LiFePO4 48V 5.1kWh battery-5yr Warranty Rack/Floor Mount -Clearance – Watts247 Wholesale

watts247.com watts247.com

They work great, but in the description it clearly says "NO BMS". Yet.... Ok, fine. once you get SA calibrated it generally reports their SOC accurately. But the engineer in me wanted more, so with the help from Pierre at SA, we cracked the code and got full BMS working in SA. It's actually pretty easy.

order this rs232 cable from Amazon. I tried 6 different ones until I got the same wiring as my breakout box. There really is no "standard" for wiring RJ66/RJ11 jacks with rs232 so it was all a crapshoot.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09P8D5WL9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Address your battery packs binary 1,2,3,4 etc. Mark them for future referenc. Don't start with binary 0, it won't work.
Press the reset button on all batteries to reboot them.

Chain all batteries with short Ethernet cables plugged into an rs485 port on each pack. This forms a "network" of batteries.
Plug the RS232 cable adapter you got above into battery #1 And then into the Pi running SA.

then in SA, choose this config:

1651904821950.png

then in advanced, this:


1651904915022.png
then hit "connect" in the previous screen and you get all of this in SA:
1651904998695.png

Pretty cool! Solar Assistant is an elegant, extremely well written product. And the support is top notch.
I highly recommend it. And it easily integrates with Home Assistant as an added bonus!

Jeff
 
Last edited:
Jazzmonger said:
I ordered 4 of these batteries from Ian at Watts247 and a Solar Assistant Image I put on a Pi4 I had lying around.

PowerUp by ESS LiFePO4 48V 5.1kWh battery-5yr Warranty Rack/Floor Mount -Clearance – Watts247 Wholesale

watts247.com watts247.com

They work great, but in the description it clearly says "NO BMS". Yet.... Ok, fine. once you get SA calibrated it generally reports their SOC accurately. But the engineer in me wanted more, so with the help from Pierre at SA, we cracked the code and got full BMS working in SA. It's actually pretty easy.

order this rs232 cable from Amazon. I tried 6 different ones until I got the same wiring as my breakout box. There really is no "standard" for wiring RJ66/RJ11 jacks with rs232 so it was all a crapshoot.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09P8D5WL9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Chain all batteries with RS485 cables. Plug the RS232 cable into battery #1.
Then address your battery packs binary 1,2,3,4 etc. Don't start with 0, it won't work.
Press the reset button on all batteries to reboot them.

then in SA, choose this config:

View attachment 93739

then in advanced, this:


View attachment 93740
then connect the battery in the previous screen and you get all of this:
View attachment 93741

Solar Assistant is an elegant, extremely well written product. And the support is top notch.
I highly recommend it. And it easily integrates with Home Assistant as an added bonus!

Jeff
Click to expand...
That’s very nice. Thanks for the info!!
 
I am starting from a similar place, but with a different brand of batteries (GSL Energy). Can you walk us through the steps in detail that you did with him to get the batteries connected into SA? I attached pictures of what my set up looks like.
 

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Hi,

My incoming battery has the same bms (comm ports, dip switch and such) identical to yours visually. Its even visually identical with SOK Rack battery in my opinion.

When you said "cracked the code", do you mean you did something in your bms for it to communicate with SA?
 
Cracked the code = I figured out that with these specific batteries, the RS485 interconnect is only for the batteries to communicate with each other and then I found an off the shelf RS232 to usb cable (instead of creating one from scratch) that works with this battery to report all stats for all batteries to SA. I tried MANY cables before finding the right one.

After that, it's all pretty vanilla.

That cable is only $13 so it's not an expensive test. And you can always send it back if it doesn't work... that's what I did. I ordered every RS232 and RS485 cable I could find and then sent them all back once I figured out the combination of which ones worked and how to wire the batteries together.

Jeff
 
StupidFlanders said:
I am starting from a similar place, but with a different brand of batteries (GSL Energy). Can you walk us through the steps in detail that you did with him to get the batteries connected into SA? I attached pictures of what my set up looks like.
Click to expand...
Looks like your inverter supports both CAN and 485. But it's anyones guess how the BMS gets reported via those and then interpreted by SA... have you tried plugging the batteries directly into the Pi via an RS485 to USB adapter Cable?
There are a few different 485 to usb cables I found on Amazon you could try:

And

RS485 cables are cat 5/6 straight thru wired (the same as Ethernet cables), and the USB adapters generally subscribe to this wiring, unlike RS232 which can be wired any old way, so you might have luck going this route.

Jeff
 
Jazzmonger said:
Cracked the code = I figured out that with these specific batteries, the RS485 interconnect is only for the batteries to communicate with each other and then I found an off the shelf RS232 to usb cable (instead of creating one from scratch) that works with this battery to report all stats for all batteries to SA. I tried MANY cables before finding the right one.

After that, it's all pretty vanilla.

That cable is only $13 so it's not an expensive test. And you can always send it back if it doesn't work... that's what I did. I ordered every RS232 and RS485 cable I could find and then sent them all back once I figured out the combination of which ones worked and how to wire the batteries together.

Jeff
Click to expand...
Very well answered sir. Mine should work the same. Thank you.
 
Jazzmonger said:
Looks like your inverter supports both CAN and 485. But it's anyones guess how the BMS gets reported via those and then interpreted by SA... have you tried plugging the batteries directly into the Pi via an RS485 to USB adapter Cable?
There are a few different 485 to usb cables I found on Amazon you could try:

And

RS485 cables are cat 5/6 straight thru wired (the same as Ethernet cables), and the USB adapters generally subscribe to this wiring, unlike RS232 which can be wired any old way, so you might have luck going this route.

Jeff
Click to expand...
thanks. I did just try plugging it directly in, but it didn't work. I guess I will keep trying different cables

Do you know if it is important to restart the batteries after connecting?
 
also, you mention getting SA calibrated. The reason I wanted to head down this path was that the inverter values didn't match the SOC that each battery was showing
 
Got mine working as well! Thank you Pierre at Solar Assistant and Jacky at GSL Energy!

Jacky sent me a pinout of the GSL Energy RS485 connection. It was only two wires. And Pierre sent me a link to this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/SongHe-Converter-Adapter-Suitable-Windows/dp/B088FX3S8J and told me to cut off the end of the ethernet cable and I used the orange and orange/white wires in it. The serial RS232/485 option worked perfectly.
 
Actually, I am still having issues. I realized from this project that the dip switches on the batteries were not correct as only three of the four batteries were showing up. GSL Energy sent me new dipswitch setting which now make the inverter work better as it shows the battery percent on the inverter screen, but now my connection doesn't work. I'll update if I figure it out. At least I know my cable works.. now it's a matter of me trying to understand the dipswitches.
 
StupidFlanders said:
Got mine working as well! Thank you Pierre at Solar Assistant and Jacky at GSL Energy!

Jacky sent me a pinout of the GSL Energy RS485 connection. It was only two wires. And Pierre sent me a link to this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/SongHe-Converter-Adapter-Suitable-Windows/dp/B088FX3S8J and told me to cut off the end of the ethernet cable and I used the orange and orange/white wires in it. The serial RS232/485 option worked perfectly.
Click to expand...
Please show me RJ45 to RS485 wire , wire number is 1 ,8 or 2 ,7 ? I don't understand , please help me
 
Just thought I would mention that there is a project that works with Jakiper and probably SOK ( same bms ) and maybe others.
It can be used with Raspberry PI or Esp32 to get the data from batteries and send it as MQTT and also integrates with Home Assistant.
It uses the console port and gets data from all batteries in the stack .
Lots of details and install instructions here
github.com

GitHub - ClassicDIY/PylonToMQTT: Reads data from the Sage BMS console port and publishes to MQTT

Reads data from the Sage BMS console port and publishes to MQTT - GitHub - ClassicDIY/PylonToMQTT: Reads data from the Sage BMS console port and publishes to MQTT
github.com github.com
 
param625 said:
Please show me RJ45 to RS485 wire , wire number is 1 ,8 or 2 ,7 ? I don't understand , please help me
Click to expand...
Hello... did you ever figure out the wiring config. for RS 232/485 Ethernet cables.... to connect EG4LL to SA Pi.
 
Jazzmonger said:
I ordered 4 of these batteries from Ian at Watts247 and a Solar Assistant Image I put on a Pi4 I had lying around.

PowerUp by ESS LiFePO4 48V 5.1kWh battery-5yr Warranty Rack/Floor Mount -Clearance – Watts247 Wholesale

watts247.com watts247.com

They work great, but in the description it clearly says "NO BMS". Yet.... Ok, fine. once you get SA calibrated it generally reports their SOC accurately. But the engineer in me wanted more, so with the help from Pierre at SA, we cracked the code and got full BMS working in SA. It's actually pretty easy.

order this rs232 cable from Amazon. I tried 6 different ones until I got the same wiring as my breakout box. There really is no "standard" for wiring RJ66/RJ11 jacks with rs232 so it was all a crapshoot.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09P8D5WL9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Address your battery packs binary 1,2,3,4 etc. Mark them for future referenc. Don't start with binary 0, it won't work.
Press the reset button on all batteries to reboot them.

Chain all batteries with short Ethernet cables plugged into an rs485 port on each pack. This forms a "network" of batteries.
Plug the RS232 cable adapter you got above into battery #1 And then into the Pi running SA.

then in SA, choose this config:

View attachment 93739

then in advanced, this:


View attachment 93740
then hit "connect" in the previous screen and you get all of this in SA:
View attachment 93741

Pretty cool! Solar Assistant is an elegant, extremely well written product. And the support is top notch.
I highly recommend it. And it easily integrates with Home Assistant as an added bonus!

Jeff
Click to expand...
Hello... did you ever figure out the wiring config. for RS 232/485 Ethernet cables.... to connect EG4LL to SA Pi. ???
 
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