I have an older whole house generator that I would like to monitor. The two things I want to monitor are the battery voltage and whether it is running or not. From what I have been reading, this could be done with ESPhome. I’m hoping to get some advise on what components would be best for this setup. I will admit that I am new to the ESPhome world, but am willing to learn as I go.
What I was thinking of doing was coming off the main battery (12v DC) and stepping it down to 3-5v to power a INA3221 3-channel monitor. From this, I could connect channel 1 to the main battery to monitor its voltage. The generator has a trickle charge system so the main battery should stay topped off. I have had a bad charger in the past that was overcharging the batteries and causing them to explode, so it would be nice to see if that was happening again.
I could then hook another channel to a point on the generator that only gets voltage (12-14v) when it is running. This will allow me to know when it has started up.
If this would work, I would then need to figure out how to get that info to home assistant through wifi. I’m thinking the INA3221 needs to be hooked up to a ESP8266 or something similar that ESPhome can communicate with. I haven’t got that far in my research yet.
Before I keep going down this hole, I wanted to get opinions and make sure I’m at least headed in the right direction. Their may be much easier ways of accomplishing this. I appreciate any input you can offer.
the_buzz_man