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@Coulomb Your insight worked. I am now able to send the commands and receive a response using RealTerm. Thank you so much. I am so happy. I will try and detail here as much as i can as to what i did so others trying the same may get off easy. So if we are sending the command ^P005PI, we need to send it as <command><CRC><CR>. in hex format ^P005PI becomes 0x5E 0x50 0x30 0x30 0x35 0x50 0x49 and CRC for this command is 0x71 0x8B and the carriage return is 0x0D. Combine all of these together and the command becomes 0x5E 0x50 0x30 0x30 0x35 0x50 0x49 0x71 0x8B 0x0D. After setting up the port in the RealTerm program, go to send tab of RealTerm and paste it in the drop down field next to send numbers button. press send numbers and you shall receive a response. dont click any of the check boxes labeled +CR or anyother. hopefully it will work as it worked for me. i am attaching the protocol for Infinisolar V 5KW protocols for anyone who may need them. for command and CRC hex calculation, i used the applet pointed out in the following post by Coulomb. Once again, thank you so much @Coulomb for your help. my next step would be to figure out how to send this using an ESP8266 and upload the data to cloud where it can be accessed remotely. i will keep sharing my progress for those who may need it. Infini-Solar V protocol 20170926(PI18).pdf

@Coulomb Thank you so much for your prompt response. I tried the Q7{: command but it retruned the same ^0. i did some sniffing on the communication between inverter and PC using wireshark software the very first command that is acknowledged and responded by the inverter is ^P005PI command. The command is preceded by an '@' and followed by '@ q @'. The response to this command is "@;^D00518;@;". This makes me realize that ^P005PI is the right command however i dont know what the charachters preceding and following the command are. I am enclosing the file saved from wireshark and would be really thankful if you can take a look at the file and advise me how to decode these commands and send them to the inverter to get a response. the first communication that gets a response from inverter in attached file is at no. 1598. Thank you so much for your time and help. 1.0.pcapng

@Nadeem Ahmed Hi, I also own an Infinisolar V 5KW and i have been busting my brains in trying to figure out how to talk to it using an RS 232 port. I have reached to the point where i now know that it uses P18 protocol and i have a list of commands that work with it. My problem is that i have not been able to find a clue as on how to push these commands to the inverter. I used a prolific usb to serial converter cable coupled with the RS 232 to RJ 45 cable that came with the unit. Using this setup i am able to connect with the inverter using the solar power software which shows me that the hardware i am using is Ok but i have no clue as on how to send the command. i have used RealTerm, YAT and RS232 analyzer to send commands but i always get something like ^0.... kind of response which the same regardless of the command. i would be very very thankful if you can help me out in sending a command to inverter and getting a response back. All i need is step by step instructions to send just one command and i can take it from there. Thank you so much. i ll look forward to hearing from you.

Hello @StephanT I have an Infinisolar V 5 KW inverter and it has two communication ports on it, one is a USB port and the other is a RJ 45 style RS 232 port. I have tried connecting to it using a USB to Serial Converter which converts my Laptops USB to Serial and the resulting serial port is connected to inverters RJ 45 style RS 232 Port. I have tried both straight and null modem configurations. and i send the commands in ASCII format using 232analyzer software. nothing works. Inverter just wont talk. can you share the pictures of the cables that you used. Unfortunately, i dont have programming back ground but i understand enough to be able to learn from what is available of the web. I would really appreciate it if you can give some details into the cables used, ports involved (computer and inverter) and some basic information on connecting both together. I know i am asking for a lot but i would be really thankful if you can guide me. Thanks