Wifi push notification

[Jiyuu]

Greetings. This looked like the best forum section to ask this question. Search could not reveal what I am looking for. I would like to tap into my SMA inverter alarm light input and connect it to a wifi push notification device to text my phone in the event of an alarm. I have a 2016 system so may not be compatible with current email/text SMA or other existing devices? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[krby]

Are you looking for a pre-built solution or are you looking for advice on how to build your own?
If you want to build your own (please be careful, inverters have high voltage components!) here are some ideas.

• You'll probably need an MCU (like an Arduino) or maybe a Rapsberry Pi. This would be the brain.
• To detect the alarm, you could open the inverter and see where the LED is wired. Run a wire from there to a pin on the Arduino or the Raspberry PI.
• On the Arduino or RPi, write code that looks for the alarm signal then "does something" with it.

That "do something" depends on how you want to send the alert. I use a service called PushOver as a generic delivery mechanism for these sorts of things. Once you have an account, you can setup URLs to hit for different alerts. You would then write code on the Arduino or RPi to make an HTTP call to a PushOver URL you setup. If you then install PushOver on your phone, you'll get push notifications for it.

To some people, this is overly complex and makes use of services outside your network, but once I started using PushOver for one thing, I kept finding other uses for it and it becomes an easy way to add notifications to my phone.

 

[Jiyuu]

Thanks Krby. 30 years operator for power production facilities so very aware of dangers but NOT an elect tech or comm tech/IT. That said I would like to avoid making my own device. I am trying to gather information before isolating the system and cracking the case open. What voltage is the input to the alarm light indicator? is it wired to a terminal or circuit board? Once I figure those things out I would then look for a device (similar to a power failure detector with email/text capability that would work at the alarm light voltage. If I can simply connect it to a terminal post great. If I need to solder the lead of the device to a circuit board I would be hesitant. (Other idea) It may come down to simply adding a Secure Power Supply outlet and plugging in the above mentioned AC power failure detector. From what I understand I would get a power failure notification from that outlet each night once the system stops producing. The alarm should clear each morning once the system starts producing again? I would know if there was a problem with the system the next time I checked the notifications during daylight hours if I see that the alarm did not clear? Really just throwing S out there to see if it sticks. Thanks for the reply and I appreciate your comments. Todd

 

[profesor79]

not sure if I understand the need, do you need something that will notify you when there is an alarm or there is no power?
If the second, and there is WiFi next to the inverter, you could get a smart plug that have a off-line notification (like tuya smart plugs), but if you need an alarm state forwarder then things are going a bit complicated.

The power on the LED is rather low, at it can be a small SMD mount one, so there is a precision soldering need.
Voltage on LED's is 5V or 3.3V, but on the main bus there can be 400V (depends on device).
Just wondering if a monitoring using a rasppbery PI will not be a good solution.

Could you tell what exact model of inverte you have?

 

[Jiyuu]

Profesor79 Thanks for the reply. I am more concerned with an alarm. I am gone for months at a time. Power failures are rare and usually for a short period of time. If an alarm comes in, there is probably a problem with the PV system or inverter and that would need to be attended to. I would like to be notified of an alarm so that I may have someone come and take a look at it and resolve the issue that caused the alarm while I am gone. Yes as I dive into this I am becoming more aware that tapping something off the alarm circuit will probably be difficult. So, Yes adding a Secure Power Supply outlet and plugging in an AC power failure detector will probably be the best fix. I have an SMA 3800TL-us 2016 so I do not know if the SMA Sunny Portal device can be added to my system or what the price for that device is? Regards. Todd

 

[zanydroid]

WiFi has a pretty long dependency chain of things that need to work for the push to go out.

Home security alarm panels can be configured to be dual network path (WiFi + cell modem) with battery backup. Would love to know if there is a smaller / cheaper form factor with that level of (UL listed) robustness available for residential. IE something embedded with a cell radio + some GPIOs that can be mapped to alerts.

 

[Jiyuu]

WiFi has a pretty long dependency chain of things that need to work for the push to go out.

Home security alarm panels can be configured to be dual network path (WiFi + cell modem) with battery backup. Would love to know if there is a smaller / cheaper form factor with that level of (UL listed) robustness available for residential. IE something embedded with a cell radio + some GPIOs that can be mapped to alerts.

Thanks for the comment. I agree finding a somewhat reliable PI device that will send out notification via wifi will be important. Not wanting to speed a ton of money on hardware but I will continue to review comments on the forum.

 

[zanydroid]

I've recommended the Home Security idea in a few places because you can reuse an existing monitoring account for security for notifications, maybe. Since you can have zones that are triggered by external wiring (this is a standard component). This results in a "one-time" $10-20 investment, namely one wireless sensor with dry contact input (the only additional cost will be replacing the batteries).

I haven't tried it myself. The vague part to me is how to get the notification in a good format after it makes it to the alarm company. You can for sure have them forward the alert like any other alert that the alarm system will send.

 

[Jiyuu]

I've recommended the Home Security idea in a few places because you can reuse an existing monitoring account for security for notifications, maybe. Since you can have zones that are triggered by external wiring (this is a standard component). This results in a "one-time" $10-20 investment, namely one wireless sensor with dry contact input (the only additional cost will be replacing the batteries).

I haven't tried it myself. The vague part to me is how to get the notification in a good format after it makes it to the alarm company. You can for sure have them forward the alert like any other alert that the alarm system will send.

My current security system is through Xfinity so it is all wireless. I will see if they have a PI device? I am currently looking at Risinglink or Myspool. Plug in PI devices that plug into, in this case my Secure Power Supply.

 

[zanydroid]

My current security system is through Xfinity so it is all wireless. I will see if they have a PI device? I am currently looking at Risinglink or Myspool. Plug in PI devices that plug into, in this case my Secure Power Supply.

I recommend asking on the hone security subreddit to see what sensors xfinity uses.

You’re going to need enough chunks of the network plugged into an SPS, and you might need a UPS stacked after the SPS.