Wallbox pulsar plus integration?

typxxi · October 23, 2024, 6:49am

Hi Ronald,

but it did cause I have checked the month of september and that whole month is matching the values from the myWallbox web and the Wallbox app, but there was no charging session crossing the beginning or ending of the month which means:

on september 1st the car was not connected
on midnight september 30th the car was also not connected

BTW: if you see a second wallbox pulsar plus in those screenshots than those figures are coming from the “evcc sensors” get their data from the wallbox cloud with its own mywallbox issues unfortunatelly.
The biggest and reason why I started posting here is the jump of 600 kWh in 1 night on october 5th hence I went back to the genuine HA wallbox with the hope to find a simple energy counter and not a session energy counter.

But my goal is to get a proper sensor for an entity card for the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly consumption embedded on their main screen.
Those are elderly and so far I could find workarounds and solutions for all their special requests - mainly font size and amount of data or headline titles.

Thanks

RT1080 · October 23, 2024, 7:08am

As said, call wallbox. Mine (pulsar plus) is from March 2022 and am on v.6.4 - no complaints. If the producer does not deliver best to complain there and not here. A bit too passive aggressive for my taste.

Good luck!

typxxi · October 23, 2024, 8:10am

You have already firmware 6.x on a Pulsar Plus ?

I got mine in February or March 2023 and they said no Update for 6.x available they are working on that for our devices to get the OCPP integration fixed.

Do you know who is providing this Wallbox Integration piece ?
Thanks

lostOzone · October 23, 2024, 8:44am

The HASS integration is not supported by the manufacturer Wallbox.
It’s maintenained by hesselonline (Hessel) · GitHub
This is written on the integration page Wallbox - Home Assistant
If you want a classic counter just install a Shelly meter with CT.

Krivatri · October 23, 2024, 10:37am

there should be an update available for your pulsar plus:

release notes pulsar plus

typxxi · October 23, 2024, 11:14am

Thanks.

I have a “classic counter” cause the values are there in the wallbox and on mywallbox page which matched those of our offline SDM72 (no modbus) counter quite good (0,6% deviation) which we had checked every month or so.

I am just asking for a simple sensor to build those daily weekly monthly meters needed.

I will try to get in touch with Hessel

Thanks a lot

typxxi · October 23, 2024, 11:25am

No,
that is a myth cause I would have an update in my wallbox available but I have not . Therefore I had opened a case 2 months ago cause we had found 2 owners of the 2024 edition who had gotten the 6.x firmware which did not suffer from the OCPP bug we are suffering.

As you can see here “No update available” and also the open case i had opened is still open regarding Pulsar Plus firmware 6.x .

and inside that release not you can find this

only available for specific Pulsar Plus chargers, not for ours.

GrantK · October 24, 2024, 7:47am

My Pulsar Plus is very old now, made in 2020 and yet I’ve been running firmware v6.1.19 for almost a year. It’s the latest version available for my charger and I have no plans to update again. Everything is working very nicely with the MQTT integration and I have local control over my LAN which is very fast and gives me complete independence from Wallbox, no matter what happens with their cloud services.

@typxxi - It’s weird to see that you are still stuck on v5.x so I hope you can get some help from Wallbox.

VdR · October 24, 2024, 8:12am

My Wallbox pulsar plus is also still on 5.x and shows as up to date.

I control it through the Home assistant Wallbox integration without issue.

Never saw the need to root, don’t see the need to update.

typxxi · October 24, 2024, 10:26am

It all depends - if yours is 6.1. then it might be a different one than what we should get cause that was 6.6 or 6.5 figure.

Cloud has not disturbed us so far and we have a running surplus charging system without an additional carlos gavazi meter cause we are using evcc for surplus charging of the car and home storage.
Pulsar Plus is connecting to the evcc (it is an home assistant addon).

Not sure if the rooted version does support OCPP and the proper way cause the current firmware 5.x from Wallbox has issues and is not ocpp compliant.

I would be happy to get that 6.x with a proper OCPP implementation and not the crappy WALLBOX style - right now evcc has adapted their software to deal with the Pulsar Plus wallboxes in its different stages.

typxxi · October 24, 2024, 10:31am

It all depends cause if you wanna use surplus charging and other features based on the solar surplus energy or the home storage battery or the dynamic tariffs then you would need to get a carlos gavazzi meter

or

use EVCC for charging.

And EVCC is relying on the OCPP standard which Wallbox claimed to be compliant with when I bought that (OCPP 1.6 j I guess) but they did not.
Therefore I am waiting for the firmware fix.

I can root anytime if I am sure that the rooted version will be better, but I will need full ocpp support . And it is a lot easier to get support from evcc if you have a genuine Pulsar Plus and not a rooted one.
thanks

GrantK · October 24, 2024, 10:48am

OCPP and MQTT are two different ways to achieve similar things. I found Wallbox’s OCPP functions to be buggy and unreliable so I’m happy to leave it behind and switch to MQTT.

I had a look at EVCC after you mentioned it and can see why you like it. An amazing list of EV Chargers are supported, along with various Solar Inverters and Battery Storage. It’s a pity that EVCC insists on using OCPP to control the Pulsar Plus. I can see why they chose that approach because it’s supposed to be a universal standard, however it’s a very complicated way of doing something pretty simple, and you are at the mercy of Wallbox when it comes to fixing bugs. Better not to rely on them unless you have no other choice.

My solar inverter manages its own battery storage and has an excellent HA integration, so I don’t need anything as complicated as EVCC. Each to their own though and I can see why you like it.

hesselonline · October 26, 2024, 7:44pm

Just to clarify, we are showing the sensors that are available in the API. Alas, there is no total kWh over time provided. I think the figure shown by the Wallbox portal is an accumulation of the different sessions.

typxxi · October 27, 2024, 10:57am

OK,
but I am not sure cause I guess evcc has this figure somehow.

I have to check that, but it is a mess if wallbox can not provide the data they have from us and are available in there cloud.

I guess I will open another complain on the wallbox support side beyond the missing proper ocpp 1.6j integration and ask for that counter to make it public available.

I do not wanna cross check every month and readjust inside HA my data manually.
That has happened now on the evcc side when their counter found the best charge I ever had in my life:

16 seconds and 579 kWh at 130.000 kW … unfortunatelly my daily, weekly, monthly and yearly counters are broken now

hesselonline · October 27, 2024, 11:39am

Personally I use the figure in the hass energy dashboard to know where my house energy has gone; this is quite reliable. However, I get a session export every month from the Wallbox portal which I use for my accounting. I would never use the hass figure for such a purpose. So what I mean to say here, maybe adjust your expectations instead of expecting everybody else to adjust to them.

typxxi · October 27, 2024, 5:57pm

I do not need that for accounting. I went back to the figures provided by evcc and developed another counter in case such BOOOST charge with 135000 kW might reoccur . I tried to remove that from my counters via developertools and then statistic to find “outliers” but that did not change the current counter value.

Therefore I added a “normalizer” value which is removing the “overcharging” for that counter till it will be reset again. Daily and weekly sensors had been resetted already so only monthly and yearly counters are infected and big times cause 578 kWh off is a lot for us.

  - sensor:
      - name: "WALLBOX by evcc - 3 MONAT"
        unique_id: "wallbox_by_evcc_3_monat"
        device_class: "energy"
        state_class: "total"
        unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
        state: >-
          {{   float( states('sensor.wallbox_3_monat') ) - 578.4 }}

  - sensor:
      - name: "WALLBOX by evcc - 4 JAHR"
        unique_id: "wallbox_by_evcc_4_jahr"
        device_class: "energy"
        state_class: "total"
        unit_of_measurement: "kWh"
        state: >-
          {{   float( states('sensor.wallbox_4_jahr') ) - 578.4 }}

At the end I had hoped that wallbox is providing those figures they have for us too cause the session counter becomes useles in autumns and spring when the car is connected for days without a break and the kWh are counted not on each day, but only on the last day when the car is disconnected again.

I am still waiting for roughly 3 months for the ocpp firmware update that has been fixed for other pulsar plus owners long ago.

THanks

lostOzone · October 28, 2024, 8:33am

Root the Pulsar Plus and install MQTT Bridge.
There is a cumulative counter. Which should be what you want.

Once rooted the OCPP still works. But I don’t know about EVCC.

About the accounting I do the same with disconnecting every day to match the right electricty price with a script in HASS to change the price. The price is attributed at disconnect with the Wallbox app/portal. Plus I use a DIM certified counter to have the right count.

Here a screenshot of the Added energy from the Cloud matching the Cumulative from the MQTT bridge

Edwin_D · October 28, 2024, 8:45am

It is very simple to create a cumulative, non resetting kWh counter from a resetting one. It is just not were you expect it to be. The utility meter integration is meant to create resetting ones, but it can also do the opposite.

Create a utility meter without reset cycle, and be sure to turn periodically resetting on. Now you are done, and more accurate than trying to calculate it from wattages.

typxxi · October 28, 2024, 11:03am

Ok,
that is a different story of cause it there is such counter.

But then I have to digg into the Pulsar Plus rooting adventure not to fall into other pitfalls while the system is running now.

What does rooted in this case mean ?

A whatsoeverfirmware version with root access to install further stuff like the mqtt bridge or will I have to install a complete new firmware ?

At the end evcc is king for me and I have to “stay” in their supported frame(work).
Thats why I am a bit hesitant after 3 months of struggling since we have installed the box.

Right now I have fixed my evcc kWh counter by adding another counter which is subtracting the error value as long as the reset has not happened for example monthly and yearly consumption figures are still using the correction of -578.4 but the montly sensor correction will be set to 0 from november on and then with new years days finally the yearly sensor will get that fix too.

I will start reading the Wallbox mqqt link you had provided, but where can I look for a good starting point and overview regarding the “rooting” topic in general?

thanks a lot

typxxi · October 28, 2024, 11:16am

I was aware of utility meter but not in this kind of way and while reading this line multiple times I found it weird at first impression.
First half sentence is “meter without reset cycle” and the second half is about periodically resetting which is quite the opposite - unless you have read the documentation and learned that “periodically resetting: on” is an option for special devices or sensors like this session counter where the new sensor will become a not resetting utility meter.

Great,
cause now I have 3 options left:

#1 repair evcc counter which I did on saturday (by adding 4 more counters that are using the old one for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly figure by subtracting the error measurement from oct. 5h of -578.4 kWh)
#2 the rooting option with a mqtt bridge installation and then using the integrated total energy counter
#3 your utility meter as a an endless counter or should I say a yearly one cause the longest intervall was year if I remember right, but I do not know for sure

Oh checked it: cycle is not mandatory therefore becomes an endless counter

Thanks a lot !