Calvin

This is great news. I have 4 Kings, 3 in parallel and 1 as a semi-online spare mainly used as a battery charger . I would be very happy to help with the testing when you get there. In the absence of release notes it is difficult to know where they have made changes. My control system is also constantly evolving so I notice new issues that had perhaps always been there but not detected by me. My list of issues/bugs is too long too include here (and to be fair I suspect that many of them occur only in paralleled setups) - perhaps one needs a "sticky" thread to log/keep track of firmware versions and associated bugs? Much as I would love to see a patched version, my gut feel is that the current firmware needs to evolve a lot before it could be called stable. Whether Voltronic will ever get around to doing that is another question altogether....

Whilst (as @Coulomb pointed out) you cannot parallel with a King, you could of course parallel with another the same as you already have. Given your loads and PV, that should overcome your inverter bottle-neck without breaking the bank.

They are all single chips. You add something like a MAX232 (as a seperate level converter) wen you want RS232 voltagtes. As @Plaashaaspointed out, it worked fine for his display update. It would never work at TTL levels.

Google "Tera Term". Download, install. Try and open your com port.

All these chips are TTL level. In USB RS232 adapter something like a MAX232 is used to convert to RS232 voltages.

My experience has been that bad USB serial adapters will start the process but not complete it. Failure to open the port (in my case anyway) has always meant it is in use by something else. Can you open the port in a terminal program?

One thing that ha embarrassed me in the past (with the "cannot open port") - If Watchpower is installed make sure that it is completely closed - incl the system tray icon.

One thing - many new PCs have a 10-pin H/W serial port header on the motherboard, it just is not brought out to the back panel. You would need (maybe) to enable it in the BIOS, and get (or make) a connector cable 10-way IDC female to DB9. Most PC repair shops would have these - they used to be installed in many older PCs. Also widely available on the web.

Sorry to hear that you are still struggling - are the symptoms still the same (as in it hangs up partly done), or does it not start at all now? I have generally just had to switch off inverter and PV (then LCD goes blank). switch on inverter, as soon as countdown begins on LCD I click the update button. Always has worked when using real serial port. 🤣

That worked, thanks! pwrsys now performs as expected Thank you!

What I get is below: pylon>pwrsys Unknown command 'pwrsys' - try 'help' pylon> Obvious difference: my prompt is "Pylon>" Yours is "pylon_debug>" Perhaps the byte sequence that I use to enter console mode is different? I use "~20014682C0048520FCC3"

I am a bit wary, in the absence of documentation. I am using RS232 into the console port - nothing fancy. Mainly use 'pwr' command, every 2 seconds. Have not logged in as I don't know credentials.

Hi @Youda, I have a stack of 8 US3000s, but pwrsys command produces "Unknown command 'pwrsys' - try 'help'". All the other commands work as expected. Do you have any idea as to what might cause this? On another topic, @ThatGuyhas found that the charging voltage that the King uses when in BMS mode (in his case not Pylon) actually comes from the BMS and is not hard-coded in the inverter firmware. Now your pwrsys command returned recommended 53250mV which is essentially the same 53.2V and the King uses when in PYL mode. With the amount of overshoot that the King's SCC produces 53.2V is simply too high as has been much discussed. So. my question is: do you know of any way to change that value in the Pylon BMS? (I am a bit nervous to start playing with config commands - these batteries are expensive...) If that is possible, and the King reads it to get it's target voltage, then finally we can get rid of the 53.2V problem.

Unusual to have a female on the PC side - are you sure that it is a serial port? Anyway, you should be able to use something like this "Baobab DB9 Male To Male Serial Cable Gender Changer Coupler" (Takealot). Also, there are some USB-serial adapters that do work. Seach this forum or the AEVA Forums for "usb serial" and you may find something that works.

Are you using a USB serial adapter? This looks just like the problem I have seen (almost always) with a USB adapter. It was solved by using a proper serial port on an old-fashioned desktop. I have also recently not had success with USB flashing (it used to work for me). Welcome to the King - some (most?) of it works, some (most?) of the time... To be fair, I have never had a problem when using a proper PC serial port. If you get an error 32, just start the flashing whilst the inverter boot countdown is happening.

@Plaashaas - I had only the dsp.hex, not mcu.hex file. MCU.hex is for the remote unit - apparently (as per @Coulomb - see post 19 July in this thread) it cannot be flashed this way.

i am not sure that the equivalent 53.2V value in the Pylon can be modified, or if it even exists. Perhaps the value is retrieved from the battery where the BMS makes it available, hard-coded otherwise. Either way, if it cannot be modified in the Pylon BMS it IS hard-coded, just in a different place 🤣. Anybody have any insights?

You are kidding, right? ESKOM deserves almost all of the criticism levelled at it, but this is silly. I have a monitor on the line frequency that alarms at 0.5Hz from 50, and it never goes off. 99% of the time it is between 49.8 and 50.2Hz. 58Hz would imply that every turbine and generator on the grid has suddenly sped up to 3480rpm - this is a physical impossibility. Of course the 99% excludes the times when it is 0Hz, aka load shedding....

Thanks for the thought, but no, I do not have the BMS cable plugged in. The upgrade to 71.93 appears to have been a red herring: the problem seems to be related to the fact that I had changed the "Back to grid" to a value higher than either bulk or float setting. For whatever reason, that forces the inverter to be in bulk charge mode. I am not sure if that would have been the case with 71.92 - I never tried such a high setting for Back-to-grid while using it. It is not too big a deal - I should be able to achieve the same result (keeping the inverter in Utility source) by having only the "Back to Battery" setting very high. The gap between the settings is hysteresis and the inverter should only switch to Battery source when it reaches the (unreachable) Back-to-battery voltage setting.

No, battery current was constant (approx 0 - battery was full) Setting 02 allows 130A over 3 inverters. I had made some changes to 12&13 - pushed them up to 54 & 55V (I always want Line mode when Utility is connected - I control that with an external contactor). Anyway, I reverted them to previous settings (51 & 52V) and Float mode returned. Went back to 54/55V and float mode disappeared. Have now gone back to 51/52V and still no float mode. So no, I am not confident about anything. Still investigating - will revert when clearer. If necessary will revert to 71.92, but flashing 3 inverters is a bit of a pain...

I have upgraded from 71.92 to 71.93 (also remote unit to 2.49) and I seem to have a new problem: The system stays in bulk charging mode and does not lower the voltage to float at all (several hours now). (Note that I am using Pylons but in USR mode). QPIGS confirms that the system is not in Float mode. @Coulomb did you perhaps see anything that might explain this? Anyone else see this behaviour?

Thanks for this. There is a file called "important.txt" that is a bit difficult to read. Is the procedure for reflashing the same as for main mcu reflashing?

@Youdaposted an excellent article on how to best charge the Pylontechs - most of the principles would apply. Well worth reading. https://powerforum.co.za/topic/2322-youdas-off-grid-lab/page/4/ halfway down the page. Also, I am pretty sure your battery is 16 cell - the 15 cell batteries (Pylontech) can't handle anything like the voltages you are talking about.

Ah, if only. My understanding is that people like @Coulomb and @weberhave no access the the source code - they reverse engineer and add their improvements into unused program flash through hooks. We would all love to have the actual source code so that this can be fixed properly. The firmware is compiled C2000 C/C++ code - no decompiler exists to my knowledge. (Some useful insights can be gained by looking at the INV.OUT file.) I have a similar experience as you (appear to) have: many years of hardware and software developement in all sorts of things including assembler and C/C++. I have (in my more optimistic moments) dreamt about creating a firmware from scratch - Voltronics programmers are either utterly incompetent or so hampered by backwards compatibility or budget related constraints (or whatever) that I would really like them out of my life. Problem with high power electronics is that the process of debugging is likely to result in lots of expensive blue smoke...

Pylontech is 15 cell, nominal 48V. I understand that the Soltaro is 16 cell (more normal), so I would up the voltages by 16/15. My experience has been that it is not too critical - I have successfully run with float from 52.0-52.4, bulk about 0.4V higher.