Programmatically read data from your Solar Inverter (Voltronic, Axpert, Mppsolar PIP, Voltacon, Effekta etc) and interface with Home Assistant via MQTT - Works with RS232 & USB!

amansingh · January 25, 2020, 2:04pm

Hi Vicom,

I have copied the whole code from GitHub (gitchhub.com/ned-kelly/voltronic-homeassistant/blob/master/homeassistant/lovelace.yaml) and pasted in raspberry Pi’s lovelace.yaml file. I am getting attached errors now.

Since homeassistant installation directory path is different in raspberry Pi so I have updated the path (/opt/ha-inverter-mqtt-agent/homeassistant/www/inverter-modes/) for .PNG files in lovelace.yaml file.

Sorry to bother you but I need to fix it.

Thank-you

nickrout · January 25, 2020, 7:54pm

It looks like you didn’t follow the instructions to install 2 custom cards https://github.com/ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant#bonus-lovelace-dashboard-files

amansingh · January 26, 2020, 2:09am

Hi Nickrout,

I have copied both the sensor files that’s why I have changed the path. Do I need to manually define the sensors/cards ? Or It’s enough to paste the code the code in to lovelace.yaml files from GitHub as i have already done.

Thanks

nickrout · January 26, 2020, 3:24am

Have you installed vertical-stack-in-card and circle-sensor-card like the instructions say? I am guessing not since your error message says it cannot find the card.

amansingh · January 26, 2020, 3:40am

Hi Nickrout,

I did that by following below steps:-

ran below commands in ssh

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/custom-cards/vertical-stack-in-card/master/vertical-stack-in-card.js

mv vertical-stack-in-card.js /config/www/

Since my homeassistant installation directory path is different then I moved vertical-stack-in-card.js “/opt/ha-inverter-mqtt-agent/homeassistant/www/”

Linked vertical-stack-in-card inside your ui-lovelace.yaml

resources: - url: /local/vertical-stack-in-card.js?v=0.1.3 type: js

Same done for circle sensor card.

I have a question here. Can I download a hassio image in raspberry without installing raspbian OS. Then configure dcoker, docker compose etc.

Thank-you

svaguilarv · February 7, 2020, 9:13pm

Hi there,

I’m getting the initial topics, but MQTT doesn’t show any values from the inverter.

What can I do?

CrispX · February 9, 2020, 4:09pm

Hi

I’m trying to use you awesome project in my effekta 5000, but I’m facing some issues gathering correct values from inverter.

Sun Feb  9 15:57:49 2020 INVERTER: Debug set
Sun Feb  9 15:57:49 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: 49 C1
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QMOD reply size (5 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QMOD: 5 bytes read: (B
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QMOD query finished
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: B7 A9
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QPIGS reply size (110 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QPIGS: 110 bytes read: (243.8 49.9 229.9 49.9 1977 1779 044 418 52.40 000 042 0040 0004 073.2 52.36 00032 00110110 00 00 00230 010
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: QPIGS query finished
Sun Feb  9 15:57:50 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI reply size (97 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI: incorrect start/stop bytes.  Buffer: (230.0 21.7 230.0 50.0 21.7 5000 4000 48.0 49.0 48.0 58.4 58.0 2 30 060 0 1 3 9 01 0 0 58.0 0 1 0 00230 010
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: B4 DA
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: QPIWS reply size (36 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: QPIWS: 36 bytes read: (00000000000000000000000000000000
Sun Feb  9 15:57:51 2020 INVERTER: QPIWS query finished

Sun Feb  9 15:57:56 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54
Sun Feb  9 15:57:59 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI read timeout
Sun Feb  9 15:57:59 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI reply too short (8 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:58:04 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54
Sun Feb  9 15:58:04 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI reply size (97 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:58:04 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI: incorrect start/stop bytes.  Buffer: (230.0 21.7 230.0 50.0 21.7 5000 4000 48.0 49.0 48.0 58.4 58.0 2 30 060 0 1 3 9 01 0 0 58.0 0 1 0 00230 010
Sun Feb  9 15:58:09 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54
Sun Feb  9 15:58:10 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI reply size (97 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:58:10 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI: incorrect start/stop bytes.  Buffer: (230.0 21.7 230.0 50.0 21.7 5000 4000 48.0 49.0 48.0 58.4 58.0 2 30 060 0 1 3 9 01 0 0 58.0 0 1 0 00230 010
Sun Feb  9 15:58:15 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54
Sun Feb  9 15:58:15 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI reply size (97 bytes)
Sun Feb  9 15:58:15 2020 INVERTER: QPIRI: incorrect start/stop bytes.  Buffer: (230.0 21.7 230.0 50.0 21.7 5000 4000 48.0 49.0 48.0 58.4 58.0 2 30 060 0 1 3 9 01 0 0 58.0 0 1 0 00230 010
Sun Feb  9 15:58:20 2020 INVERTER: Current CRC: F8 54

I’m using a pi3 connected directly using USB.

Any idea what could be ?

raphii · February 9, 2020, 8:36pm

Hey @CrispX, you have to change the QPIRI Buffervalue to 102 as mentioned in https://github.com/ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant/issues/5

Hey @ned-kelly / others,
i’ve got my inverter running, but i think i am suddenly ultra bad at math, or the homeassistant “utility_meter” entity i created is bad. I’m adding voltronic_load_wh with an utility meter, if i am in Battery mode.
In my particular case, it should be around 7,5 kWh, but i am only at 2,5 kWh.

Has somebody done such a calculation?
In the Grafana i saw an “Running Cost”, what is the formula?

Thanks a lot!

raphii

svaguilarv · February 10, 2020, 4:09pm

I’ve got the same problem. I tried QPIRI at 102 but it keeps doing the same.

CrispX · February 10, 2020, 11:50pm

Thanks @raphii, it works update the QPIRI Buffer value !

ned-kelly · February 11, 2020, 6:29am

Can you try and adjust the watt_factor in your inverter.conf file? - docker-voltronic-homeassistant/config/inverter.conf at ebd3bbe2bc274b33b46696639a59b79b98b175d1 · ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant · GitHub

ned-kelly · February 11, 2020, 6:34am

It should tell you how many bytes are returned in the response (in debug mode) – Can you please change whichever value is timing out to match this?

amansingh · February 11, 2020, 7:11am

Hi All,

Can someone please share the raspberry Pi running image (fully configured MQTT, HA) so that I can just plug usb cable to inverter from raspberry Pi & start accessing data on HA browser.

Thank-you in Advance.

ned-kelly · February 11, 2020, 7:32am

Hi @amansingh - I was running the project via docker-compose on a Pi Zero, and my Home Assistant is a different (much more beefy) intel server (hence using MQTT to send the data to Home Assistant). If you just want a “turnkey” solution to monitor your inverter, Home Assistant and this adaption may not be the right answer.

Regardless, you could also run Homeassistant via Docker on your Pi (just to put everything on the one device) – Instructions around how to stand up Homeassistant via docker can be found here: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/

Cheers,

raphii · February 22, 2020, 11:50pm

Hi,
i’ve opened a pull request to fix the qpiri value issue (make it configurable).
If this is done, i will publish it in my hassio-addons repo, so users wont have to struggle around with compiling and stuff

riaan199 · February 27, 2020, 4:00am

Hey I seem to be getting an error message when running
docker-compose up -d
on step 2 i get this error
Running in fad3a3db431a
ERROR: Service ‘voltronic-mqtt’ failed to build: The command ‘/bin/sh -c apt update && apt install -y curl git build-essential cmake jq mosquitto-clients’ returned a non-zero code: 139

ned-kelly · February 27, 2020, 4:58am

Thanks @raphii - I’ve finally got my replacement inverter (same firmware but larger KW model) so I’ll just test and then re-push up to docker hub in the next few days once I’ve had a moment to build the latest ARM images.

ned-kelly · February 27, 2020, 5:00am

@riaan199 - Can you post what the actual log is prior to this error message? Perhaps there’s been some updates to debian:stretch which which have broken part of the install…

Like my previous post, I’m a few days of installing my replacement inverter (last one got blown up in a electrical storm) and once it’s up and running I’ll push some updated images to docker hub so you don’t need to build the image manually.

SeByDocKy · February 27, 2020, 9:11am

Hello,

I am in the process of integration. Can it work with the Hassio Mosquitto brocker ? as MQTT server ?

SeByDocKy · February 27, 2020, 1:43pm

Hello,

I met problem to collect data from my solar inverter. First of all the model I have:

It’s a basic PIP model where there is also a USB-c in complement of the UART in DB9 connector

The associated software is the Watchpower SP3… The SP3 is important because other software version is not working with.

I am using a RASPI 4 where HA is installed fine with mosquitto broker or MQTT webserver installed (I tried both). MQTT comunication is done with a user/password.

I tested the MQTT link with an ESP32 /w ESPhome and I can listen my topic… so my MQTT setup in HA is fine.

I installed your package as described in the instruction. I tried either via the direct USB cable (USB-c <> USB) or via a serial to USB adaptor. Both are seen with the lsusb command

Of course I set up correctly the mqtt.conf file with the IP of my raspberry/brocker, 1883 as port, homeassistant/sensor/WKS as topic, then the username and password.

Install first the docker-compose software via apt-get and deploy the software as depicted: sudo docker-compose up -d No error in compilation

The problem… I am receiving nothing in HA… No new entities discovered… And when I am trying to listen MQTT nothing appeared. Here is the log with mosquitto MQTT

1582810681: New connection from 172.30.32.1 on port 1883.
1582810681: Socket error on client <unknown>, disconnecting.
1582810696: New connection from 172.30.32.1 on port 1883.
1582810696: Socket error on client <unknown>, disconnecting.
1582810711: New connection from 172.30.32.1 on port 1883.

All lovelace part is done … via HACs. Lack just the informations