RE: Re: Solar PV ?

[Marcus Warrington <marcus.warrington@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Lee,

Thanks for the info on the RS845 card, would you be willing to share your
P=
ERL code? I'm sure there are options to compile PERL into a self contained
=
windows executable, but failing that I do have some virtualised Linux
machi=
nes.

I remember playing with MisterHouse a few years ago, primarily because I'd
=
bought some Audrey internet devices and there was a custom firmware to
supp=
ort MisterHouse. Coming from a background of things being event driven, it
=
took me a while to get my head around writing procedures that would be
cons=
tantly looping.

Thanks for the link to PVOutput.org , looks like a great site for everyone
=
with a solar array... can't wait to start using it :)

Marcus

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of V=
argster
Sent: 20 July 2011 09:37
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Re: Solar PV ?



Marcus.

**
>
> After my installer has been talking to the SMA support guys, it
transpire=
s
> that the RS485 card only works with their webbox (=A3350!) and not
with t=
heir
> Sunny Explorer software. I'm not convinced that's necessarily true but
> probably safe to say it certainly wouldn't be the "plug and
play" solutio=
n
> I'd envisaged.
>
> Err, not 100% correct... The RS485 card works with the Sunny Data
Control
software.
However, that (as stated below) seemed a bit flakey to me, and only ran on
Windows, no use to me - my server runs Ubuntu Linux.
So, after a week or so's tearing my hair out* I have a Perl based solution
(that was developed for the Mister House home automation system) that
shoul=
d
run on anything.
It talks to the new SMA Sunny Boy inverters (mines an SB3800), and pulls
back the useful bits of info in plain text, for you to do as you pleasae
with.
It also features writing the data to PVOutput.org, a website I can
thoroughly recommend to track your PV data.

Anyway, given this new piece of information I'm back to having to make do
> with Bluetooth like yourself. My server is probably only about 7M away
fr=
om
> where the inverter will be so I'm pretty confident I would be abler to
ge=
t
> away with using a simple passive USB/Cat5 extender to get the receiver
in=
to
> the same cellar as the inverter (i.e. within line of sight).
>
> When you say that Sunny Explorer is "flakey" what do you
mean ? Does it
> crash or just loose connection, if it crashes then that's probably
easier=
to
> automate a solution for.
>
Leaving it running for a while, it just freezes, or stops getting data.
Running my code (on Linux) it's run for 6-8 weeks (I needed to power down
the server), so the inverter hardware is OK, must be the software (or
Windows).

Lee

*A very long story. Incorrect data layouts, comms glitches on startup, edge
cases, poor support, etc.

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