CCDM - Charge Controller Data Manager

[Fort Wisers]

So sorry Mike, I should have explained that better, tweaks on the Classic Controller itself.
Cheers:
Brent

[qrper]

So sorry Mike, I should have explained that better, tweaks on the Classic Controller itself.
Cheers:
Brent

Sometimes, i can be incredibly stupid! The second I posted my reply, I knew what you wanted. So I checked the Classic and A-RST is set to OFF

Mike

[ClassicCrazy]

from what I saw the errors I had on the one controller were identical to what Mike was seeing.
I will investigate the firmware,  settings, and any differences later.
I do know both my Classics are on same firmware which is 2197 mngp
                                                                                             2245 Classic

Larry

[Fort Wisers]

Morning guys,

Larry -> if both your CCs are on the same firmware and one controller read generates random errors but the other doesn't then that pretty much rules out firmware!
Thanks to for checking.

Mike -> You're too hard on yourself! Thanks for checking the status of A-Rst and your firmware.

Mike and Larry -> A-rst in tweaks (on the CC) can be set to ON, this will reboot your CC at midnight, therefore flushing out all networking errors in the classic, so you can try and set this to On.
Doing some reading, this helped solve some disconnect errors others had with other applications and issues with Classics falling off networks. However, what we're seeing here (random read failures on some controllers but not all) is a little different so I'm not expecting A-rst to fix this.
Maybe we try that and leave, allow the classic to reboot overnight and see if that cures the issue?
A quick check, if you didn't feel like waiting until the next day, would to be to just hard reboot your classics and see how CCDM responds (have the errors stopped)?
If A-rst / reboots don't work, I have another idea....


One more question for you guys, in your CC's, how is your CC getting an IP address? Is it set statically or DHCP?

I'll admit, I'm at a bit of a loss, I'll have to do some playing next time we're at the cabin on the real controller, in the meantime I'll keep reading here in hopes that something pops out at me.
Our classic is running at FW 2126, so I'm behind, maybe this is a good excuse to finally uprev just as a sanity check and to keep the classic up to date.

Thanks guys!
Brent

[qrper]

Morning guys,

Larry -> if both your CCs are on the same firmware and one controller read generates random errors but the other doesn't then that pretty much rules out firmware!
Thanks to for checking.

Mike -> You're too hard on yourself! Thanks for checking the status of A-Rst and your firmware.

Mike and Larry -> A-rst in tweaks (on the CC) can be set to ON, this will reboot your CC at midnight, therefore flushing out all networking errors in the classic, so you can try and set this to On.
Doing some reading, this helped solve some disconnect errors others had with other applications and issues with Classics falling off networks. However, what we're seeing here (random read failures on some controllers but not all) is a little different so I'm not expecting A-rst to fix this.
Maybe we try that and leave, allow the classic to reboot overnight and see if that cures the issue?
A quick check, if you didn't feel like waiting until the next day, would to be to just hard reboot your classics and see how CCDM responds (have the errors stopped)?
If A-rst / reboots don't work, I have another idea....


One more question for you guys, in your CC's, how is your CC getting an IP address? Is it set statically or DHCP?

I'll admit, I'm at a bit of a loss, I'll have to do some playing next time we're at the cabin on the real controller, in the meantime I'll keep reading here in hopes that something pops out at me.
Our classic is running at FW 2126, so I'm behind, maybe this is a good excuse to finally uprev just as a sanity check and to keep the classic up to date.

Thanks guys!
Brent

Brent/Larry

I had a slice of Raspberry PI this morning. I purchased a 'kit' of all the required parts including a pre-loaded sim card. Everything went together without hassle.
I had a terrible time getting the Raspberry to connect to my wifi. I figured it out after a few million tries.
And Brent, downloaded the files and everything came to an abrupt halt trying to figure out Linux.
Clicking on the CCDM file, it opened the python window.... Hummmm.... Thinking back to my old days of binary files on the Apple, I tried typing 'run' but that didn't work either. So why not click the 'run' button.

Whoa, there be CCDM on the Raspberry PI. Changed the configure file to match my Classic and the program works fine.

I still have some errors from the Classic like I posted, but it appears not as many. I don't know.

Will set the A-rst to on later today.

Happy camper here. Now if there was only a way to allow more than one connection at a time to a Classic. That would be cool.

A Linux question.

When CCDD has been downloaded and put into a folder. Where does the space come from? Is that stored on the SD card or on the PI's internal RAM?

mike

[mcsarge]

Morning guys,

Larry -> if both your CCs are on the same firmware and one controller read generates random errors but the other doesn't then that pretty much rules out firmware!
Thanks to for checking.

Mike -> You're too hard on yourself! Thanks for checking the status of A-Rst and your firmware.

Mike and Larry -> A-rst in tweaks (on the CC) can be set to ON, this will reboot your CC at midnight, therefore flushing out all networking errors in the classic, so you can try and set this to On.
Doing some reading, this helped solve some disconnect errors others had with other applications and issues with Classics falling off networks. However, what we're seeing here (random read failures on some controllers but not all) is a little different so I'm not expecting A-rst to fix this.
Maybe we try that and leave, allow the classic to reboot overnight and see if that cures the issue?
A quick check, if you didn't feel like waiting until the next day, would to be to just hard reboot your classics and see how CCDM responds (have the errors stopped)?
If A-rst / reboots don't work, I have another idea....


One more question for you guys, in your CC's, how is your CC getting an IP address? Is it set statically or DHCP?

I'll admit, I'm at a bit of a loss, I'll have to do some playing next time we're at the cabin on the real controller, in the meantime I'll keep reading here in hopes that something pops out at me.
Our classic is running at FW 2126, so I'm behind, maybe this is a good excuse to finally uprev just as a sanity check and to keep the classic up to date.

Thanks guys!
Brent

Brent/Larry

I had a slice of Raspberry PI this morning. I purchased a 'kit' of all the required parts including a pre-loaded sim card. Everything went together without hassle.
I had a terrible time getting the Raspberry to connect to my wifi. I figured it out after a few million tries.
And Brent, downloaded the files and everything came to an abrupt halt trying to figure out Linux.
Clicking on the CCDM file, it opened the python window.... Hummmm.... Thinking back to my old days of binary files on the Apple, I tried typing 'run' but that didn't work either. So why not click the 'run' button.

Whoa, there be CCDM on the Raspberry PI. Changed the configure file to match my Classic and the program works fine.

I still have some errors from the Classic like I posted, but it appears not as many. I don't know.

Will set the A-rst to on later today.

Happy camper here. Now if there was only a way to allow more than one connection at a time to a Classic. That would be cool.

A Linux question.

When CCDD has been downloaded and put into a folder. Where does the space come from? Is that stored on the SD card or on the PI's internal RAM?

mike

In the Pi World, everything that would be on a disk in a normal computer is on the SD card (it acts as a disk).

Typically, when you launch a python program you must use the python command and a reference to the file to run (like the old basic command:
basic myprogram.bas)

python /home/pi/folder/MyCoolProgram.py or
python3 /home/pi/folder/MyCoolProgramThatRequiresPython3.py

if you "cd" (change directory) into the folder where your python file is located, then you can just do:

cd /home/pi/folder
python MyCoolProgram.py

Matt

[Fort Wisers]

Nice work Mike!

To answer your question, the CCDM package itself (folder, files, documents etc) takes up space on the micro SD card (looks like a cell phone sim card), this space will always be gone unless you delete the CCDM package entirely. So if you want to minimize the space taken up one thing you can do is delete the documentation folder in the CCDM package.
That will eliminate the Getting Started guide, you can simply open  the guide online through the GitHub account or keep as a copy on another PC that isn't as limited as a PI is in terms of storage space.
This use of SD card space goes for anything you put onto your PI. Think of the micro SD card like the Hard Drive on your PC.

When you actually run CCDM, the program itself will use up a small portion of your RAM to create objects / variables etc etc...basically to create itself (this we call an instance).
However, when you close the program, garbage collection processes will free up that portion of RAM and return it for other programs to use.
So this use of RAM is only applicable when running the program.
That also goes for other programs you run.

Hope that helps!
Take care:
Brent


**EDIT** Matt posted his reply to the thread while I was typing this in and beat me to the punch! Thanks Matt, especially for the point about starting the program via terminal

[ClassicCrazy]

Brent,
I see the error block come up occasionally on both of my Classics.
I had an issue this morning with the networked follow me shared battery temperature ( not related to CCDM) so I did a VMM reset on the second Classic.
It didn't seem to change those errors.
Could they just be a timing issue reading those blocks on the network ? Although it is always the same errors on both Classics ( and Mike's) when they come.
It doesn't seem to effect CCDM though.

Larry

[Fort Wisers]

Hey gang!
How often would you say is occasionally Larry?

So its not fixed via a Classic reboot (not surprised by that one).

On this end polling at 0.5 seconds has not been an issue.
The network of our system is very simple, one router, one pi, one classic. All Static IPs (static on the Intranet end, not static on the internet end).
I guess anything is possible in terms of network traffic, but generally 0.5 second polling rate is pretty darn slow from a network perspective.

I do somewhat wonder if we're occasionally interrupting the classic while it's doing other things and can't service the modbus request?

So, onto my other idea.....
Perhaps we try this, in config find the following:
CC_POLLING_RATE = 0.5   #Set general system update rate (in secs)
Let's increase that to 2 so it looks like this:
CC_POLLING_RATE = 2   #Set general system update rate (in secs)

If that helps then we can try dropping to 1.5, then 1.
If it doesn't help then I'll have to trial a few things at our cabin to try and replicate the issue, I never pushed the system below 0.5 to see how close to a lower margin we are.
I'd also like to uprev our firmware just because it's long over due!
Our province just issued a "stay at home order" it might be a while until anything can take place on our system.
Normally I have internet access to VNC into the cabin system, but we shut our inverter down during the winter to protect against the possibility of the system draining should panels become snow loaded.

In the meantime, I'm glad it's not causing any real grief, but I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

As always, thanks for all the feedback!
Brent

[ClassicCrazy]

At first I thought that the errors I saw were coming from one Classic being on Follow Me.
But then I today I saw them on both.
I still haven't figured out why I lost the network battery temperature sensor in Follow Me after it worked for so long.
I thought I had some problem today because no power was coming out of one of my systems. Turns out it was because when the battery temp compensation failed the system thought it was full because the other system had the battery voltage up higher . Weird issue - that would suck to have that happen on a remote system. I got it working again by plugging in the second battery temperature sensor.
I just read the knowledge base on follow me problems - guess I need to test my connecting cable and there is an easy way to do it.
I will take a look at CCDM  again when I have some time to study what it is doing a bit more.
Larry

[qrper]

Hey gang!
How often would you say is occasionally Larry?

So its not fixed via a Classic reboot (not surprised by that one).

On this end polling at 0.5 seconds has not been an issue.
The network of our system is very simple, one router, one pi, one classic. All Static IPs (static on the Intranet end, not static on the internet end).
I guess anything is possible in terms of network traffic, but generally 0.5 second polling rate is pretty darn slow from a network perspective.

I do somewhat wonder if we're occasionally interrupting the classic while it's doing other things and can't service the modbus request?

So, onto my other idea.....
Perhaps we try this, in config find the following:
CC_POLLING_RATE = 0.5   #Set general system update rate (in secs)
Let's increase that to 2 so it looks like this:
CC_POLLING_RATE = 2   #Set general system update rate (in secs)

If that helps then we can try dropping to 1.5, then 1.
If it doesn't help then I'll have to trial a few things at our cabin to try and replicate the issue, I never pushed the system below 0.5 to see how close to a lower margin we are.
I'd also like to uprev our firmware just because it's long over due!
Our province just issued a "stay at home order" it might be a while until anything can take place on our system.
Normally I have internet access to VNC into the cabin system, but we shut our inverter down during the winter to protect against the possibility of the system draining should panels become snow loaded.

In the meantime, I'm glad it's not causing any real grief, but I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

As always, thanks for all the feedback!
Brent

Brent,

The midnight Classic reset didn't stop the errors here either.
Other than the Whizbang shunt, there is nothing connected to my Classic 150, so it's not talking to any other device.

Mike

[Fort Wisers]

Morning! Happy Friday!

Anyone try playing with the CC_POLLING_RATE values yet?
If you haven't no worries....
I have a number of changes developed towards 0.0.2, just need to find the time for a bit of testing.

Have yourselves a fantastic weekend:
Brent

[ClassicCrazy]

Morning! Happy Friday!

Anyone try playing with the CC_POLLING_RATE values yet?
If you haven't no worries....
I have a number of changes developed towards 0.0.2, just need to find the time for a bit of testing.

Have yourselves a fantastic weekend:
Brent

Brent
I just changed the poll rate to 2.0 and have seen the error block but not as often as before - just occasionally and mainly from one controller.

Larry

[Fort Wisers]

Brent
I just changed the poll rate to 2.0 and have seen the error block but not as often as before - just occasionally and mainly from one controller.

Larry

Interesting......
Next time we're at the cabin I'll do a Firmware Update on the Classic and perform some tests.
As always, thanks for the feedback.
Have a good week:
Brent

[ClassicCrazy]

Brent
I just changed the poll rate to 2.0 and have seen the error block but not as often as before - just occasionally and mainly from one controller.

Larry

Interesting......
Next time we're at the cabin I'll do a Firmware Update on the Classic and perform some tests.
As always, thanks for the feedback.
Have a good week:
Brent

Brent - Midnite has Classic Firmware 2193 on their webpage but Bob had put out another one that got rid of an annoying tone if you were using the voice options. Not sure if they incorporated that fix into 2193 or not. But this is the firmware I am using 2245 - look here http://midniteftp.com/forum/index.php?topic=4212.msg41349#msg41349

Larry