Monitoring an Outback Mate from a Pi eventually shuts off inverter?

[TomW]

I know this is not an Outback forum but I heard the nasty rumor the Midnite  guys designed it.

The story goes back a few years to using a Linksys NSLU2 "Slug" for several things that included monitoring my Outback Mate.

The Slug had old tech USB 1.0 and would toss errors regularly when loaded up doing things on the USB like USB drive writes while driving a USB relay driver board.

I had to bail out on the monitoring of the Mate because quite regularly while logging the Mate would shut off the inverter. Single FX inverter then and stacked FX inverters now Mate2 I believe they call it. Black flush mount type. Version 4.1.6 0X224F. I blamed the Slugs USB 1.0 and errors for the inverter shut downs. It has been a couple years or so since I tried monitoring the Mate via serial port.

I had worked with Ross on that Mate monotoring long ago mostly clearing up the ugly malformed logs it would toss from errors.

Now part of our "Black Box" initiative is tentatively tasked with also interacting with Outback gear so I started monitoring my Mate yesterday to get a leg up on that process. At 22:08 last night the inverter shut off. That was the last log time before the Pi shut down, it is powered via wall wart from the inverters. I caught it pretty early when I made my middle of the night trip to the little room and the night lights were out (run from inverter).

The inverter has never "just turned off" unless I was pulling data from the serial port. Batteries were in good shape.

The inverters were both lit up green LEDs and flashing yellow. Mate said "OFF" and the inverter LED on the softkey was off.

Any ideas on why this happens?

My Perl script just reads the serial port it has no write commands in it.

Thanks.

Tom

[Zap]

Tom,
I’ve been monitoring my outback stuff for years now and have never seen this.

I get data from the mate va a serial to ip converter (QSD-100D) and some scripts that I use with a home automation program, the only problem I have had is sometimes the comport will close for no good reason and I have to resend the comport command ( SetComPortRTSDTR 7,False,True) to the QSD-100D

I have the mate, thinking of moving to the mate3  to get away from the serial port and converter stuff
Would make it much simpler to use with the BeagleBone Black.

Zap

[Halfcrazy]

Actually we are also working on some stuff here that eliminates the Mate. I am running the AXS port and some custom software written by a friend that reads and WRITES to all Outback devices. Very cool stuff. We are close to having some stuff for people to play with for sure. The end result looks like it will be a small program that runs and logs to a data base, shows info you choose to show and with any luck will be compiled to run on a PI and then the Pi can talk to the AXS and Classics and store the data for you.

Here is a screen shot of the Alpha pages

[Zap]

Looks like I’ll be ordering up a AXS port to play with,  a hole lot cheaper than the mate3 .
Will be looking forward to it.

[TomW]

Always the way. This used to be hobby soaks up cash like a sponge ;=>

As soon as I think I am catching up they move the finish line.

AXS port looks like another $100+ in the hole.

Looks interesting but for now I am going have to work with what I have until I win the lottery or something.

Thanks for the feedback.

Tom

[Zap]

Why not add a serial port to your Pi and read directly from the mate bypassing the Linksys NSLU2 "Slug".
I use this on a netdunio 2 when I played around with Graham’s program. http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/126
The trick with the Mate is to get the port open and keep it open so it will spews out the data.
Just throwing this out there.

[TomW]

Why not add a serial port to your Pi and read directly from the mate bypassing the Linksys NSLU2 "Slug".

No Slug in the mix. Quit using it at all a couple years back. Sorry if I was not clear on that.

Pi has a USB port but needs a converter cable to adapt to the 9 pin serial on the Mate.

So it is Mate>>adaptor>>Pi

I think its something in the adaptor that causes it. Maybe.

Thanks for the feedback. My Perl script is a first atempt that "worked" so I never went ahead and redid it or tried another method. I recall you need to hold one pin high to activate the optoisolator LEDs. Back to the drawing board I guess.


Thanks.

Tom

[boB]

TomW, you might want to look at the "code" that the regular mate uses from its RS232 port that tells
the inverter to turn on and off.  I know that it does that over that port and not too much else besides
monitoring.

I have not really used the mate's RS232 port information because I could not control things over
that port.  Scott Payne is the one who designed the mate and he works at Silicon Energy now,
a local solar panel manufacturer that was started from Outback.

boB

[Zap]

I recall you need to hold one pin high to activate the optoisolator LEDs.

FYI: Out of the “Mate Serial Communications Guide”

The Mate requires that the DTR (pin 4) be driven high
(set) and that RTS (pin 7) be driven low

[TomW]

The Mate requires that the DTR (pin 4) be driven high
(set) and that RTS (pin 7) be driven low

I nearly had that guide memorized at one point.

My Perl script does just that and configures the port  with this code snippet:

Code Select Expand



$ob->baudrate (19200) || die "fail setting baudrate";
$ob->parity ("none") || die "fail setting parity";
$ob->databits (8) || die "fail setting databits";
$ob->stopbits (1) || die "fail setting stopbits";
$ob->handshake ("none") || die "fail setting handshake";

$ob->dtr_active (1) || die "fail setting dtr_active";

$ob->rts_active (0) || die "fail setting rts_active";


Maybe I can convert this Perl to C and just set the pins as necessary and just dump the data to a file continuously I think it spits out a line every 60 seconds by default. Or use a modem app like minicom to dump. Never pursued controlling the Mate this way and really not part of my current personal project which is just monitoring.

All ideas appreciated. I tried a LOT of stuff and this is just where I stopped a couple years ago when I abandoned the Slug as a viable option due to the Slug USB 1.0 port either too slow or going / gone bad.

Old project revived to see where it would lead which is right where it lead before. I can't have the inverter shutting down when I am not here / asleep. Fridge and 2 freezers on it 24/7 plus well. Rather abandon this route than have that bugging me every time I leave or go to sleep.

Thanks.

Tom