russ
Solar Advocate
Posts: 63
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Post by russ on Oct 31, 2019 2:51:00 GMT
It was windy and very dry (something like 4% humidity) here in southern California. The Rover on my 200 watt system racked up 52 amp hours.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Oct 31, 2019 13:43:58 GMT
So far, it looks like the Array Voltage(V) is the controlling factor, for the roll over of the 'Accumulated AH'. Here, it has been raining for the last couple of days, and checking the collected data, it looks like during the daytime, the Array Voltage(V) has not gone below 12.0V, so, their has been no reset of the 'Accumulated AH'. Yesterdays 'Accumulated AH' was a whopping 1Ah.
For the fall and winter months I will be utilizing the solar system as a supplemental electrical source. I have attached a Deltran battery tender for a constant power source. According to the Kill-a-watt, it is using 30 watts, to run. Since it is using 1.25Amps to charge the battery array, it is taking some time to get the 100Ah+35Ah battery array up to a full charge.
I have also been collecting and viewing the data, with the Monitor program, to see just how the Deltran is working. It seems to be working as expected. The load on the system is ~.75A or ~10 Watts, so, 1.25A - .75A = 0.5A, which is what the battery gets, when the solar array = 0V.
I am now waiting for a couple of sunny days where the solar system helps in getting the battery array up to full charge, and then the Deltran switches over to maintain mode. It will be interesting to see how the two power sources maintain the battery array.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Nov 1, 2019 13:26:00 GMT
Yesterday, the Deltran finally got the battery array up to 13.0V @ 12:53. At that point, it looks like, according to the Monitor program data set, the Deltran went into its maintain mode. Everything looked good until 15:53 when the data set shows, it dropped down to 12.9V. Checking the Kill-a-watt, it showed 0 power being used, means Deltran is not doing anything. I just left everything alone, to see if the Deltran would go back to charge mode, it did not.
I guess the Deltran microprocessor gets confused when there is a load on the battery, and it shuts down after awhile. A new problem to solve.
The last three days, around here, have been rainy or very cloudy. Today cloudy, and the next couple of days possible snow flurries. So, the solar panel array is doing very little, yesterday, 1AH. There is no spot where I could place all the panels, have them connected in series, for maximum panel array production. Not even sure how much improvement that would be.
With the data I am collecting, I will try to evaluate, using the existing panel locations, to see what kind of difference it would make by adding more panels. Space for the panels is the limiting factor.
For me, the Monitor program is turning out to be a very important analysis tool.
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Post by retrodaredevil on Nov 1, 2019 21:23:05 GMT
For the fall and winter months I will be utilizing the solar system as a supplemental electrical source. I have attached a Deltran battery tender for a constant power source. According to the Kill-a-watt, it is using 30 watts, to run. Since it is using 1.25Amps to charge the battery array, it is taking some time to get the 100Ah+35Ah battery array up to a full charge. I'm pretty sure that you shouldn't use two batteries with different capacities. If I remember correctly, doing that would only get you the capacity of 35 Ah. I don't think they just add up like that. I think if you have batteries in parallel or series, each cell should have the same capacity and should be used the same amount, ex: don't use a 12V battery for two years then add another identical, unused 12V battery to the system.
I'm sure a quick search would tell you some of the drawbacks of doing that.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Nov 2, 2019 12:59:35 GMT
Thanks for pointing that out.
So, yesterday I disconnected the 35Ah battery from the 100Ah battery and kept the Deltran on.
Today doing a casual look at the Monitor program supplied data set, prior to the disconnect, the battery was 12.9 - 13.0V. At the disconnect, with only the 100Ah being charged, the battery pulled back to 12.8V. So, it sort of looks like the charging characteristics do change. I need to look at the data, in finer detail.
Since I will be using a battery charger for charging the battery array, I will be setting up an experiment to see if I can determine a battery power profile. I hope this will help me in trying to determine at what point I should start, or turn on the battery charger.
Not sure how involved I want to get with this, but in another thread it mentioned the INA219 device. I guess if I attached, one each, on the batteries, I would imagine I could get some very good data sets from that.
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Jan 8, 2020 14:13:34 GMT
I have been using the Solar Station Monitor program quite a bit, but now my needs are changing.
Has anybody developed a utility or program, in Windows 10 pro, for accessing the Rover information via MODBUS. What I am looking for is something that does an on demand, real time, data access. I have been using the .csv data, but that does not provide a real time scenario.
I am trying to create a GUI where I can use my own selected data subjects. For instance, AH, I would have a button, on the GUI, where I can get, from the Rover, that piece of information, in real time. I am also working on some data logging, but I want to select to data that I want to log.
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Post by mediadogg on Jan 9, 2020 15:13:47 GMT
Did you "Google it"? I did, and found a bunch of links for programs written in C# and VB (both compatible with windows 10).
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Post by retrodaredevil on Jan 9, 2020 16:10:15 GMT
Pretty much every program made for the Rover is compatible with Windows. Some projects like solarthing (my own) or solarshed have a simple way to get the program to run as a systemd service on a Raspberry Pi. You can just as easily use Windows, you will just have to find a way to launch the program on start. There are a few differences when running on windows like the name of the serial port. If you want to create your own solution or use solarthing or solarshed, I would set up Grafana. SolarThing can easily use InfluxDB as a database and solarshed can use Prometheus as a database. Grafana supports both. Here are the links for anyone interested: github.com/wildmountainfarms/solarthinggithub.com/corbinbs/solarshedBoth of these solutions do take some set up. I am able to answer questions about SolarThing if you have any. I haven't used solarshed, but it (along with my own) is one of the best projects out there to monitor Rovers. |
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raydas
Solar Devotee
Posts: 166
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Post by raydas on Jan 9, 2020 16:47:18 GMT
I took a quick glance at solarshed and solarthing, it looks one is done in python and the other is done in java. Since I have no experience in java, not sure about that one.
As suggested, I checked the internet, and lot of stuff came up for MODBUS. I have decided that I know nothing about the MODBUS protocol, so, I will have to do some reading about MODBUS, before I do anything else.
I did notice that there were some examples using C#, I might consider doing something in Visual C#, using the MODBUS protocol to work with the Rover. With Visual C# you get a GUI, and an .exe application code. A lot to think about.
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Post by mediadogg on Jan 9, 2020 17:28:52 GMT
I took a quick glance at solarshed and solarthing, it looks one is done in python and the other is done in java. Since I have no experience in java, not sure about that one. As suggested, I checked the internet, and lot of stuff came up for MODBUS. I have decided that I know nothing about the MODBUS protocol, so, I will have to do some reading about MODBUS, before I do anything else. I did notice that there were some examples using C#, I might consider doing something in Visual C#, using the MODBUS protocol to work with the Rover. With Visual C# you get a GUI, and an .exe application code. A lot to think about. Good research. The C# projects that I saw, looked pretty complete to me. Being a C# Visual Studio programmer, I wouldn't have much trouble adapting them to my use. but I didn't analyze them carefully enough to make any judgement about which was "best." The renogy link already posted has all the info on modbus itself. So that part is "easy" in that you don't have to go searching - it comes directly from the manufacturer. My suggestion would be (1) Download and install the free version of Visual Studio Community and get one of the Microsoft sample apps running ("Hello World") - just to get up to speed on using that platform, then (2) download one of those C# MODBUS sample apps from Codeproject or some place like that, and just get it running as-is in Visual Studio. Then you can bootstrap your way into what you want to do, by making small changes and doing real-time debugging in Visual Studio. That's where it shines. You can test incremental code changes on the fly. If you get something running, and you hit some kind of snag in C#/Visual Studio, give me a shout. |
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Post by mediadogg on Jan 9, 2020 17:51:50 GMT
Pretty much every program made for the Rover is compatible with Windows. Some projects like solarthing (my own) or solarshed have a simple way to get the program to run as a systemd service on a Raspberry Pi. You can just as easily use Windows, you will just have to find a way to launch the program on start. There are a few differences when running on windows like the name of the serial port. If you want to create your own solution or use solarthing or solarshed, I would set up Grafana. SolarThing can easily use InfluxDB as a database and solarshed can use Prometheus as a database. Grafana supports both. Here are the links for anyone interested: github.com/wildmountainfarms/solarthinggithub.com/corbinbs/solarshedBoth of these solutions do take some set up. I am able to answer questions about SolarThing if you have any. I haven't used solarshed, but it (along with my own) is one of the best projects out there to monitor Rovers. Hey some real cool stuff there!!! Maybe port the Python over to C# ? |
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Post by retrodaredevil on Jan 9, 2020 21:48:12 GMT
I might consider doing something in Visual C#, using the MODBUS protocol to work with the Rover. With Visual C# you get a GUI, and an .exe application code. A lot to think about. If you don't care about storing data, then yes, a GUI would be the way to go. With SolarThing (and I think solarshed as well), the data is updated frequently enough for it to be real time. solarshed requires some Python knowledge to set up the serial port and log data. I've been working to make SolarThing fully configurable through JSON to where you don't have to edit any Java code. I'll admit the documentation for setting it up isn't quite there, but I'm still working on it.
So it is possible to use Grafana for real time data. Grafana is good for real time and past data. Graphs are always fun and Grafana makes that pretty easy. If you're worried about space for the data you save, databases usually support the ability to delete data after a certain amount of time.
Also, you could use any language you wanted to create a GUI application. If you decide to use C# you can probably get the most native looking application.
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