DavidA Docker based Home Assistant interface for Voltronic Solar Inverters
This project was derived from the 'skymax' C based monitoring application designed to take the monitoring data from Voltronic, Axpert, Mppsolar PIP, Voltacon, Effekta, and other branded OEM Inverters and send it to a Home Assistant MQTT server for ingestion...
The program can also receive commands from Home Assistant (via MQTT) to change the state of the inverter remotely.
By remotely setting values via MQTT you can for example, change the power mode to 'solar only' during the day, but then change back to 'grid mode charging' for your AGM batteries in the evenings - But if it's raining (based on data from your weather station), Set the charge mode to PCP02 (Charge based on 'Solar and Utility')...
The program is designed to be run in a Docker Container, and can be deployed on a lightweight SBC next to your Inverter (i.e. an Orange Pi Zero running Arabian), and read data via the RS232 or USB ports on the back of the Inverter.
Example: My "Lovelace" dashboard using data collected from the Inverter.
Docker Hub: bushrangers/ha-voltronic-mqtt
Prerequisites
- Docker
- Docker-compose
- Voltronic based inverter that you want to monitor
- Home Assistant running with a MQTT Server
Configuration & Standing Up
It's pretty straightforward, just clone down the sources and set the configuration files in the config/ directory:
# Clone down sources on the host you want to monitor...
git clone https://github.com/ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant.git /opt/ha-voltronic-mqtt
cd /opt/ha-voltronic-mqtt
# Configure the 'device=' directive (in skymax.conf) to suit for RS232 or USB..
vi config/skymax.conf
# Configure your MQTT server host, port, Home Assistant topic, and name of the Inverter that you want displayed in Home Assistant.
vi config/mqtt.json
Then, plug in your Serial or USB cable to the Inverter & stand up the container:
docker-compose up -d
Note if you have issues standing up the image on your Linux distribution, you may need to manually build the image - This can be done by uncommenting the build flag in your docker-compose.yml file.
Integrating into Home Assistant.
Providing you have setup MQTT with Home Assistant, the device will automatically register in your Home Assistant when the container starts for the first time -- You do not need to manually define any sensors.
From here you can setup Graphs to display sensor data, and optionally change state of the inverter by "publishing" a string to the inverter's primary topic like so:
Example: Changing the Charge Priority of the Inverter
COMMON COMMANDS THAT CAN BE SENT TO THE INVERTER
(see protocol manual for complete list of supported commands)
DESCRIPTION: PAYLOAD: OPTIONS:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Set output source priority POP00 (Utility first)
POP01 (Solar first)
POP02 (SBU)
Set charger priority PCP00 (Utility first)
PCP01 (Solar first)
PCP02 (Solar and utility)
PCP03 (Solar only)
Set the Charge/Discharge Levels
PBDV25.7 (Discharge when battery at 25.7v or more)
PBCV24.0 (Switch back to 'grid' when battery below 24.0v)
Set other commands PEa / PDa (Enable/disable buzzer)
PEb / PDb (Enable/disable overload bypass)
PEj / PDj (Enable/disable power saving)
PEu / PDu (Enable/disable overload restart);
PEx / PDx (Enable/disable backlight)
Bonus: Lovelace Dashboard Files
Please refer to the screenshot above for an example of the dashboard.
I've included some Lovelace dashboard files in the homeassistant/ directory, however you will need to need to adapt to your own Home Assistant configuration and/or name of the inverter if you have changed it in the mqtt.json config file.
Note that in addition to merging the sample Yaml files with your Home Assistant, you will need the following custom Lovelace cards installed if you wish to use my templates: