Elbow

Perhaps you only have that much load (demand)? What are you doing with the power that your panels are making?

Hi, Yes, it is in Grid Tie with backup (II) mode. It is set to allow feed in to grid. I have the factory password; when I set the maximum power to feed in using Solar Power then the inverter does indeed feed that amount back. I can see that using the output of QPIGS and also in the nett grid connection power measured by Openenergymonitor. Here is a chart for today - the yellow is watts on the Grid side of the inverter. I set the maximum to feed in to 600W which is what the inverter did as soon as there was enough excess power over charging the batteries. So the inverter will feed in power. I suppose I could just control is by continuously resetting the maximum, but I doubt its very responsive and don't want to wear out the flash. Can you confirm that on your unit the LDPR works on the RS232 or USB ports? Do you have a newer model? Maybe mine just doesn't have the support (though the documentation describes the Modbus card and what it does). Thanks, @Elbow

Oh, no pics. Try again

If its not its a pretty convincing clone. But here you go: solarpower-debug.zip Thanks, Elbow

Hi @riogrande75 , I saw this code on the German Photovoltaikforum, having read through all the relevant threads there as best I can with limited German and the help of Google translate. Code like this doesn’t get any response when I send LDRP+00100 (for example) on the USB port via /dev/hidraw0. I can issue other queries fine using the same code (QPI, QVFW, QPIGS etc). My inverter is branded Renesola Replus IH3KW-48-V and really is unsupported by Renesola. And I never get response to my queries to Voltronic. I know from that German forum that you reverse engineered the modbus card by listening to what it does over the serial port that connects on the edge connector. Nice work. But I do also see there many people who can’t make it work. (Of course there can be many reasons for that). I was talking to @Coulomb and he pointed out that there are two processors inside the Infinisolar and that maybe the serial port on the intelligent socket connector actually goes to the “other” processor compared to the main RS232 and USB ports. And its the “other” processor that implements LDPR. Or maybe its just a security feature that its only accepted on the port in the intelligent slot? So which port are you using to issue the LDPR command? I was hoping to use the USB port since it is already connected up so as to get data from the inverter. I do have a Modbus card so if I can’t figure it out I guess the next thing is to fit it and emulate the energy meter - responding to the queries from the modbus card. Thanks!

Hi @The Terrible Triplett, If I ask nicely would you send me this diagram in the editable format (is it Proficad?). It looks like a good start to draw my setup. Thanks!

Hi, Here is a quick zip file of the program I use to poll the batteries over RS485 and push the read numbers out to OpenEnergyMonitor's MQTT server. Maybe it will be helpful. I'm not the original author - I just modified to publish over MQTT using a JSON structure, and to scan for batteries. pylon485-elbow.zip

I used a cat5 ethernet cable. On the battery side the A/B pins are pins 7 and 8, the brown pair. What works for me is solid brown to the TX- pin on my adapter, striped brown to TX+. 115200 baud rate.

Hi @riogrande75 or others, Apologies to pick up an old thread, but I'm keen to similarly drive my Infinisolar feed back setting from my own software. But I can't get my LDPR commands to get a response when I send them on the USB port. Do you have some sample code to look at? Thanks, @Elbow

Hi @Youda, I’ll PM you the program I’m using in the morning. You need to get the right baud rate (mine use 115200) and get the wires the right way round...

Asking me? I don't know - I came by mine when Reneplus was exiting domestic stuff and selling off their one which is an Infinisolar or close and so got at a great price a coupe of years ago. I have 2. When one breaks I am sure I will go to Victron.

I've found mine to be very versatile - it just effortlessly pushes power around - panels to batteries, essential and grid. Panels plus a bit of battery to essentials, batteries to grid - whatever you want...

Do you think it will be that much more efficient than just using a timer to get the geyser to heat during the day when there is lots of sunshine? I guess it will use all available PV power while the standard geyser heater takes a lot of power for a short time - the panels will only be able to supply some of the demand when it comes on.

One cable only. The batteries chain themselves. The one is at address 2, the other is at 3.

Hi, I’m using RS485. I didn’t put terminators on but no doubt I should. I found a project on Github and modified it to publish to mqtt. If that makes sense to you i’m happy to share the code.

I've pretty much always uses 52v. But since I've been cycling my batteries there have been no issues.

Remind us when they arrive. I’m tempted.

Not yet. I emailed 3 suppliers this morning, no reply yet. Sonop web site says they have but not first choice cos its mail order. I’ll try chase up tomorrow.

Plumstead Electrical carries them.

Pointer to where? thepowerstore is out of stock.

It's not that. I checked the resistance across the A/B pins on the adapter with the resistor connected and it was 120 ohms. Maybe the problem is my RS232/485 adapter, or that combined with the USB/serial. My other FTDI based adapter doesn't work - presumably a victim of the FTDI clone chip infowars. So I'm trying to get another. Wish I could find out how to factory-reset the ET112 to get it back to 9600 baud.

Yes - at the meter end you put a bridge between pins 3 and 5 to connect an internal terminating resistor. At the PC end I used a resistor.

Well I just pulled cat5e. Rs485 can go a long way. otoh right now it’s not working...

Thanks. Well I successfully connected, then using the app changed the baud rate to 115200 to match my other rs485 devices and now I can’t connect for love nor money... Emailed them for advice.

Well I don’t have a Victron setup. Not yet, anyhow 😉 I found https://www.gavazzionline.com/CGNA/Brochures/GtBrochure/ucs.zip/ - "Universal Configuration Software" which seems to be the right thing.