Another dashboard for shed PV

Started by ricardo, June 26, 2018, 01:54:17 PM

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bee88man

I failed to mention that emonPi also has two current transformer inputs also and can measure, display and log stats of PV production and grid traffic.

ricardo

Quote from: bee88man on June 29, 2018, 10:27:09 AM
I failed to mention that emonPi also has two current transformer inputs also and can measure, display and log stats of PV production and grid traffic.

I have an egauge that i use on my grid tied micro inverter system .. it is very similar to the emonpi in that you can measure power across 2 or more AC circuits.

for an offgrid system using a KID CC it would be a good compliment since the KID can't shed much light into the AC side of the panel..  if you have a WBJR you can deduce the entire load connected to the system, but the emonpi can shed more granular data about the AC circuits.

also  you can get a better resolution with an emonpi ..

bee88man

My desire is to set up or to find a way to have the separate PV Router's diverted energy tally sent to the emonPi by a serial cable or maybe add the RFM69HCW radio to the PV Router to send the packets. The PV Router's pcb has solder pads already for the radio.

Would this diverted energy tally need to be done in NodeRed somehow?

ricardo

i dont know what ports the emon pi exposes .. but if they expose a USB port you can do a serial to USB connection from the KID to the emon pi -- decode the data and then send it to wherever you are storing your data.  (i would guess some form of emoncms running on a pi or on the cloud)

that decoding and sending of data can be done in node-red which the emonpi should already have running inside it (or you can add)

ricardo

so after futzing about for a few days with the Raspberry Pi Zero W -- i failed to get a satisfactory set of packages loaded so it can be a standalone stats gateherer and server .. the problem is that the zero is a first generation ARM chip and most software packages are either old or missing .. 

so for now i've abandoned that idea (it still runs node-red no problem) -- and i'm going to build a standalone solution on a raspberry pi 3B+ .. which is the latest rev of the pi .. the upside is that there should be more software support .. the downside is that it uses more power .. (the zero uses < 1 watt .. the 3 will use about 1.5 to 2 watts) ..

still better than running some old computer you had lying around (in my case the old mac mini i used would eat up 20 watts) ..

anyways .. i'm still spending some time on putting together a reasonable rpi image .. 

ClassicCrazy

Thanks for the update   ,  my Pi Zero and Pi 3b+  have arrived and sitting next to me - I haven't had the time to mess with them yet.

Larry
system 1
Classic 150 , 5s3p  Kyocera 135watt , 12s Soneil 2v 540amp lead crystal for 24v pack , Outback 3524 inverter
system 2
 5s 135w Kyocero , 3s3p 270w Kyocera  to Classic 150 ,   8s Kyocera 225w to Hawkes Bay Jakiper 48v 15kwh LiFePO4 , Outback VFX 3648 inverter
system 3
KID / Brat portable

ricardo

things went far smoother and easier with the PI 3B+ ... and that little machine has some oomph compared to the zero-w.  (4 cores is overkill for this project)

So i have a simple install using docker for all 3 components (nodered, inlfuxdb, grafana) .. docker should make it easier to update in the future. -- i've made a simple dashbard (tailored to my small 24v, 600W, 225ah system)  -- tailoring the gauges for a different size system can be done easily.

no real attempt to make the system secure since i expect that if you try this you will be running it inside a secure network, and expose just the ports you need to the outside world ..

there are a few more things i want to do before i post an image that you can flash into an SD card.  (like testing that it works to clone the image, and putting together a list of instructions).. 

i chose a 16GB sd card for the image because i am cheap and didnt want to spring for the 32GB -- my guesstimate is that a 16GB card has enough room for over 10 years worth of data at the 1 minute resolution that the KID publishes -- i probably will configure the db to reduce the resolution to 1 hour for data older than 2 years .. and i think that should mean that the setup would have enough room for 25+ years.  (ie: the raspberri pi or sd card will die before you run out of space).

i haven't yet attempted to reduce the power usage of the pi, at the moment it consumes .4a @ 5v (~2 watts), its possible to bring that down (disable ehternet if you use wifi, disable a few cores, disable the HDMI port after you configure it), but i think i might leave that as an excercise to the end-user .. here is what the nodered flow looks like, and what the dashboard looks like ..

another neat project to add on would be to make an image for a separate raspberri pi that had an LCD attached to it as a remote viewer of the KID data.  -- you could mount that on the wall or have it sitting on the mantle.

ricardo

another fun project would be to use the GPIO pins to attach a temperature probe (or two) to the pi .. then you can also capture ambient temperature near where the pi is installed ..

ClassicCrazy

wow  that looks great Ricardo .
I have been using my Kid to charge some odd and ends batteries so it is not on all the time . I have Classic which is the work horse charge controller here.  But I think I will reconfigure some things so I can fire up the Kid and put it to full time work again so I can try out your Node-Red monitoring.  I do have a lot of one wire temperature sensors around here that I could add on for temperature too - am using them on an arduino now to monitor fridge and freezer temps and also have another set of temp sensors outside reporting via ESP8266 . Nice thing about the one wire temp sensors is you can have a bunch of them on just one pin since they all have their own address .

I think you should upgrade to a Classic so you would save me and a lot of others bunch of effort making a Node-Red interface for it ! I will have to buy a lottery ticket so if I win I am definitely buying you a Classic !

Regarding the SD card - seems like the 32 GB and 16 GB are not too different in price any more.  The last two I bought are Samsung Evo 32 GB at local walmart - I see the price is even less right now ( always priced a lot more in the store so  you have to show them the internet price and they will give that  to you ).  https://www.walmart.com/ip/Samsung-32GB-EVO-Micro-SDHC-Class-10-Card-with-Adapter/813427777

I also want to get a camera for my Pi  -- maybe just for the Zero W  . Looking into the options for those.

Larry
system 1
Classic 150 , 5s3p  Kyocera 135watt , 12s Soneil 2v 540amp lead crystal for 24v pack , Outback 3524 inverter
system 2
 5s 135w Kyocero , 3s3p 270w Kyocera  to Classic 150 ,   8s Kyocera 225w to Hawkes Bay Jakiper 48v 15kwh LiFePO4 , Outback VFX 3648 inverter
system 3
KID / Brat portable

Westbranch

Hi Larry,what will you be using the camera for?  Security?
KID FW1811 560W >C&D 24V 900Ah AGM
CL150 29032 FW V.2126-NW2097-GP2133 175A E-Panel WBjr, 3Px4s 140W > 24V 900Ah AGM,
2 Cisco WRT54GL i/c DD-WRT Rtr, NetGr DS104Hub
Cotek ST1500 Inv  want a 24V  ROSIE Inverter
OmniCharge3024  Eu1/2/3000iGens
West Chilcotin 1680+W to come

ricardo

I hope that the next offgrid system i get to build is large enough to need one or more classics. (or maybe by then midnite has released the b17) ..

ClassicCrazy

Quote from: Westbranch on July 09, 2018, 02:10:34 PM
Hi Larry,what will you be using the camera for?  Security?

I had a Yi Home camera - they are just fun to play around with. I built a small mobile solar cart - built on an old bicycle trailer frame . It is just a couple older panels , charge controller , battery but it makes for a nice power supply to move around outside . I built two of them - one I have in the garden for electric fencer , the other I have a Linksys router with DDWRT linked as repeater to my home wifi . So on that one I have an ESP8266 microcontroller with temperature sensors and I had the Yi camera which link to the repeater router that has a backfire wifi antenna to get back to my home router. It is fun to monitor the critters,  sky and storms, and anyone else who passes in front of it.  But my Yi was an indoor camera and I left it out through too many heavy windy rainstorms which got it wet under the small canopy I had made for it. Someone wrote an operating system for the Pi with a lot of features - so you can save the video on your own server instead of having to use the Yi chinese paid servers , or the other option was the built in sd card -- but that is a bit of a pain to go through and review . The Pi software will I think let you fast forward through video , and it has software motion detection too so it will only record on motion if you set it up that way.  You can get an inexpensive Pi camera for $5 or some that cost more with infared lights and night capture.  Linus just made youtube summary of it https://youtu.be/H7p5YEOrlSc

Larry
system 1
Classic 150 , 5s3p  Kyocera 135watt , 12s Soneil 2v 540amp lead crystal for 24v pack , Outback 3524 inverter
system 2
 5s 135w Kyocero , 3s3p 270w Kyocera  to Classic 150 ,   8s Kyocera 225w to Hawkes Bay Jakiper 48v 15kwh LiFePO4 , Outback VFX 3648 inverter
system 3
KID / Brat portable