June 26, 20223 yr 2 hours ago, SolarConvert said: Yeah, still shinwa. I actually have experience some other brand of battery with shinwa BMS that works with CAN, which I already posted in reply previously. However, I think it doesn't universally works. These BMS comms are a mess.
June 26, 20223 yr 1 hour ago, SolarConvert said: So both Solar Assistant and ICM should work with the BMS485 port for monitoring the inverter. The RS485 port (bottom right) doesn't work for that purpose or at least the pins are not known. I have a raspberry PI connected to the BMS485 port of my inverter and it works well. However, if I change the lithium mode from 0 to 16, then the BMS485 port changes its behaviour and does not return valid modbus responses when queried. So the predicament here is if eventually I do get BMS comms working from the inverter to the Narada battery, I will lose the BMS485 port to BMS comms, which will mean I need to use the RS232 port for monitoring (which works too) and then I lose the data logger. Or what got me excited from the previous response from Deye was that potentially BMS comms to the Narada battery can be achieved via the BMS CAN port of the inverter, but that is likely a typo as previously mentioned. That would explain why I could not get the two working... Was getting CRC errors as I have mind on 16. Narada battery works perfectly on the BMS port and I am running ICM on RS232 but would like to have the logger too but need someone to figure out the RS485 port first as I dont see the batteries support CAN Bus sadly
June 26, 20223 yr Author 1 hour ago, Jay-Dee said: That would explain why I could not get the two working... Was getting CRC errors as I have mind on 16. Narada battery works perfectly on the BMS port and I am running ICM on RS232 but would like to have the logger too but need someone to figure out the RS485 port first as I dont see the batteries support CAN Bus sadly Yes, that would be ideal, inverter to battery BMS comms, inverter live monitoring and data logger, all connected at the same time. Unfortunately us Narada battery owners might need to settle for two out of three because the battery doesn't do CAN. Personally I would drop the data logger in a heartbeat if I were to get BMS comms going on the BMS 485 port and only connect it when needing to do the odd firmware update. Regarding the RS485 port, it seems to be present only on the 5kW models with that label and is for energy meter comms. On the 8kW model it is called Meter_CON. Who knows whether it would ever support Modbus queries the way we want it to. 5kW Deye: 8kW Deye A different avenue that I would like to explore given time (which is scarce) is using the CAN port of the inverter to communicate to the Narada battery by converting the CAN bus comms to what the Narada battery expects by using a Raspberry PI. I have an RS485 CAN HAT which can do both RS485 and CAN bus. The idea would be for the PI to act like a CAN-compatible battery to the inverter and it would in turn speak to the battery via RS485. I think it would be something similar to this. At this point though it is purely speculation on my part that it would work for the Deye/Sunsynk and Narada battery combo.
June 26, 20223 yr 1 hour ago, SolarConvert said: Yes, that would be ideal, inverter to battery BMS comms, inverter live monitoring and data logger, all connected at the same time. Unfortunately us Narada battery owners might need to settle for two out of three because the battery doesn't do CAN. Personally I would drop the data logger in a heartbeat if I were to get BMS comms going on the BMS 485 port and only connect it when needing to do the odd firmware update. Regarding the RS485 port, it seems to be present only on the 5kW models with that label and is for energy meter comms. On the 8kW model it is called Meter_CON. Who knows whether it would ever support Modbus queries the way we want it to. 5kW Deye: 8kW Deye A different avenue that I would like to explore given time (which is scarce) is using the CAN port of the inverter to communicate to the Narada battery by converting the CAN bus comms to what the Narada battery expects by using a Raspberry PI. I have an RS485 CAN HAT which can do both RS485 and CAN bus. The idea would be for the PI to act like a CAN-compatible battery to the inverter and it would in turn speak to the battery via RS485. I think it would be something similar to this. At this point though it is purely speculation on my part that it would work for the Deye/Sunsynk and Narada battery combo. That is soo interesting. I did not know that the RS485 was not a full port and only for Energy Meter Comms... I wonder if that could be changed with a firmware update. So, I have dropped the logger and have the battery on BMS and ICM on RS232... Unfortunately ICM is not working as it should but that I am chatting to them about... Solar Assistant works too but is limited on the info and not as comprehensive. I am also going to ask if either could potentially work on CAN Bus instead What issues are you having with the battery? Did you see I got it working and posted the pin combinations? Can I assist?
June 26, 20223 yr Author 1 hour ago, Jay-Dee said: So, I have dropped the logger and have the battery on BMS and ICM on RS232... Unfortunately ICM is not working as it should but that I am chatting to them about... Solar Assistant works too but is limited on the info and not as comprehensive. I am also going to ask if either could potentially work on CAN Bus instead You should get the same behaviour when monitoring via the BMS485 or RS232 ports. I have used them interchangeably - the same set of registers are read via either port so functionality should be equivalent. But perhaps the issue is specific to ICM? 1 hour ago, Jay-Dee said: What issues are you having with the battery? Did you see I got it working and posted the pin combinations? Can I assist? My issue is that the inverter does not speak to the battery with Lithium mode 16 no matter what combination I try. I’ve tried (arranged according to A/B RS485 signals): Inverter pins 2,1 to battery pins 2,3 Inverter pins 2,1 to battery pins 7,6 Inverter pins 7,8 to battery pins 2,3 Inverter pins 7,8 to battery pins 7,6 All of the above should be valid combinations because pins 2 & 7 and 1 & 8 are joined on the inverter BMS485 port, and the same should apply to the Narada battery pins 2 & 7 and 3 & 6 on the battery side. Deye inverter: Narada battery: I have a single battery and have dried DIP switch positions 000000 and 100000. Your post made me check the inverter 2,1 to battery 7,6 combo again and I almost kicked myself when I saw that the network cable tester reported that one of the pin combos was not working. I re-crimped the cable several times until I realized that the “remote” part of the network cable tester was faulty and when I tested the cable on the main cable tester unit only, it did check out. So the cable is good and there is still no BMS comms. My suspicion is that it is the BMS on the battery side that either needs a firmware update (not sure where to request this), or it is a BMS that Deye didn’t test Lithium mode 16 on, or the BMS is simply faulty/non-responsive to the queries from the inverter. This is why I need to pin down which BMS is in the battery (without opening it up hopefully) and trying to read values directly from the battery via an RS485 to USB adapter with the correct software (which I don’t know where to get :D). The software that @zivva posted allowed me to read the date/time from the BMS but not the SOC, SOH, etc. So that is where things stand at the moment.
June 27, 20223 yr 9 hours ago, SolarConvert said: Your post made me check the inverter 2,1 to battery 7,6 combo again and I almost kicked myself when I saw that the network cable tester reported that one of the pin combos was not working. I re-crimped the cable several times until I realized that the “remote” part of the network cable tester was faulty and when I tested the cable on the main cable tester unit only, it did check out. So the cable is good and there is still no BMS comms. Where are you based? If in Cape Town, perhaps I can help with the way I tested to found the combo. I have a USB to RS485 cable for my battery to ICC / ICM / Solar Assist.... I used a RJ45 wall mount box to a normal crimp to extend this cable and then strand by strand I clipped them until the battery stopped reading in ICM... Reconnected it and then continued to find both A & B cables and confirm that no ground was being used. This confirmed for me that pins 6 & & were used on the battery side. From there I crimped it into pin 1 (from ping 6) and pin 2 (from pin 7) for the inverter side and it worked like a charm on mode 16 (on my Sunsynk). If this is not working, my suggestion would be to try the battery cable to a Pi running one of the mentioned softwares. Confirm that the battery is working. If this is the case, then it would be safe(ish) to rule our battery firmware and then you can concentrate on the inverter side If you are somewhere close by and dont have the cable / Pi we can test with mine
June 27, 20223 yr I wish you all good luck. My Narada Red batteries have different ports 2 x RS-485 and 1 x LAN, no serial, and apparently uses a different baud rate to the white batteries, 9600 baud vs 14400 baud, I have been told. Then again, during this journey I have been told a lot of things! From my understanding the battery type sets the baud rate for the communication, so I am poked. I have managed to arrange a credit for my 3 x 7.2KWh Naradas, getting them replaced by 4 x 5.1 Shoto batteries on Wednesday, ones that work on CAN bus. All the best and thanks so much for all the conversations and tips. It kept me busy for a while and I had a lot of fun in the process. For anyone that maybe interested, I have 1 of each of the suggested cable configs lying around now What bothers me the most is that so called experts, supply combinations of equipment that do not work correctly. That is 1 aspect. The next is the configs of the "off the grid" systems. I have a 8KWh Deye, 24 x 455 Watt panels (the max that the 8KW Deye can take), and 22KWh of battery, and i cannot run a heater in winter. Also interesting, in summer I could generate 73KWh on a sunny day, at the moment that number has dropped to 34Kwh, so even if i added more batteries, i could not charge them in winter to cater for the longest nights.... and my house is optimised, LED globes, gas stove, inverter fridges, washing machine, heat pump tumble dryer. During the day my house idles at about 135 watts and at night when we go to bed about 350 watts (lots of LED lights around the house). Then of course using appliances and running the pool pump and stuff goes on top. My household uses 800 KWh per month in total for everything. This has been a most interesting exercise, and my personal perception of what it means to be "off the grid" has changed completely. I have learnt a lot!!! All the best
June 27, 20223 yr 18 minutes ago, CCSA10 said: What bothers me the most is that so called experts, supply combinations of equipment that do not work correctly. That is 1 aspect. The next is the configs of the "off the grid" systems. I have a 8KWh Deye, 24 x 455 Watt panels (the max that the 8KW Deye can take), and 22KWh of battery, and i cannot run a heater in winter. Also interesting, in summer I could generate 73KWh on a sunny day, at the moment that number has dropped to 34Kwh, so even if i added more batteries, i could not charge them in winter to cater for the longest nights.... and my house is optimised, LED globes, gas stove, inverter fridges, washing machine, heat pump tumble dryer. During the day my house idles at about 135 watts and at night when we go to bed about 350 watts (lots of LED lights around the house). Then of course using appliances and running the pool pump and stuff goes on top. My household uses 800 KWh per month in total for everything. 34KWh x 30 days = 1020KWh... If you are using 800KWh per month, which means that on average you have 1KWh per day spare... This would not be enough to keep the batteries fully charged in winter when you take into account a few bad weather days in a row or higher usage days in a row With regards to not being able to run a heater... This in theory would very much depend on what is running through the inverter at that time... If you have a 2KW heater and are already running your 4KW tumble dryer with one other appliance on, there is a good chance that it will need to draw from the grid. The other thing to check is what your max draw current from your batteries is set to. This may have been set low to protect the cabling (for good reason) and therefor you will never be able to pull full load. Please, if this is the case... before changing the setting and burning the house down, make sure that your battery cabling is of sufficient gauge to handle more than your full load over an extended period of time To me, off grid means that you dont need to use the grid (ever)... This is a pie in the sky solutions for many and unaffordable when considering a week of rain or clouds. Awesome that you have got them to change your batteries. It is nice when an installer honours their work
June 27, 20223 yr Some additional info. My heat pump tumble dryer uses about 200 Watts only! It was expensive to buy but rather liberating. It runs of the solar system comfortably, hardly noticed. With the inverter washing machine and this tumble dryer, it is very possible to do a emergency load of washing at night. I use inverter aircons for heat. My 24000 BTU runs at about 1.8KW while generating heat. All other heaters have been disposed off. From the sales pitch, i had visions of installing pre-paid (still going to do this) and turning it off. Then build up a credit and switch it on on the rainy days only. This is valid for summer, but not winter. I also have a backup generator (8.5 KVA controlled by the inverter), but this is an expensive way to charge batteries. This has not been working well due to the miscommunication between the inverter and batteries. This should be solved by my new battery installation, but it is still a last resort, the 2nd level failover. I must say, the inverter handles the gennie very well. It starts it but only gradually adds the load after letting it run for 2 minutes or so. It also only starts the gennie if there is no grid power, quite clever! Has anyone tried a wind turbine as an addition to solar? My logic says it may generate something at night and when it is raining...... I see some 4KW ones going for under R30K
June 27, 20223 yr Author 12 hours ago, Jay-Dee said: Where are you based? If in Cape Town, perhaps I can help with the way I tested to found the combo. … If you are somewhere close by and dont have the cable / Pi we can test with mine Thank you for the kind offer but I am in the JHB area, so quite far away. 12 hours ago, Jay-Dee said: I have a USB to RS485 cable for my battery to ICC / ICM / Solar Assist.... I used a RJ45 wall mount box to a normal crimp to extend this cable and then strand by strand I clipped them until the battery stopped reading in ICM... Reconnected it and then continued to find both A & B cables and confirm that no ground was being used. This confirmed for me that pins 6 & & were used on the battery side. From there I crimped it into pin 1 (from ping 6) and pin 2 (from pin 7) for the inverter side and it worked like a charm on mode 16 (on my Sunsynk). That is a very smart way of reverse engineering the USB to RS485 cable without ruining it! I thought of buying one of those cables just to verify which PINs it uses for the A/B/GND signals, but you have answered this now. So there is nothing special about this cable? I do have a spare USB to RS485 converter that I can use to test this. I see the Solar Assistant Narada RS485 cables (and software) have been updated “to support the latest Narada batteries released in Q2 2022” - I wonder if the PINs are any different. In any event, I thought of requesting a trial of Solar Assistant (if they do trials) just to see if it is able to read my battery. That would then confirm if the battery firmware is fine or not, like you say.
June 27, 20223 yr Author Solar Assistant trial obtained, thanks to Pierre I will report back on findings.
June 28, 20223 yr 8 hours ago, SolarConvert said: Thank you for the kind offer but I am in the JHB area, so quite far away. That is a very smart way of reverse engineering the USB to RS485 cable without ruining it! I thought of buying one of those cables just to verify which PINs it uses for the A/B/GND signals, but you have answered this now. So there is nothing special about this cable? I do have a spare USB to RS485 converter that I can use to test this. I see the Solar Assistant Narada RS485 cables (and software) have been updated “to support the latest Narada batteries released in Q2 2022” - I wonder if the PINs are any different. In any event, I thought of requesting a trial of Solar Assistant (if they do trials) just to see if it is able to read my battery. That would then confirm if the battery firmware is fine or not, like you say. Was about to say, yes they do offer trials... No there is nothing special about the cable. I used a standard converter I purchased from Communica - https://www.communica.co.za/products/bmt-usb-rs485-ttl-converter-ftdi?variant=31667841826889 From what I believe, the FTDI chip based ones are better / more reliable
June 28, 20223 yr Found something interesting, not that it helps much now but would have origonally... Sunsynk have updated the user manual. https://www.sunsynk.org/_files/ugd/9350f7_f638285bf3f64db3919aed0c5ff8100f.pdf On page 46, the Narada batteries have been added with notes for the pins. I think they are looking at the RJ45 plug backwards to me or perhaps the battery supports 2 options mirrored like the inverter On pages 69 and 70 they have also added appendixes for pin-outs for Inverter and Battery ports Hope these can help
June 28, 20223 yr 20 hours ago, CCSA10 said: Has anyone tried a wind turbine as an addition to solar? My logic says it may generate something at night and when it is raining...... I see some 4KW ones going for under R30K Have not tried one but had the same thoughts as you. From all the YouTube videos that I have watched there seem to be 2 main issues with them.. 1 - Noise on the larger but cheaper versions can be an issue 2 - Value for money when looking over an extended period of time results in the better yields from installing additional panels In your case, as you have said... You have maxed out your MPPTs, so extra panels that way would not be viable. You could used the Aux port for Wind or extra panels via a micro-inverter but then your generator would fall away. How had you planned on connecting the turbine. Also out of interest, which turbine were you looking at as that seems very good value?
July 1, 20223 yr On 2022/06/13 at 1:10 PM, Jay-Dee said: Sooo... You are brilliant!!!! I was following the dip switch settings as per my manual but yours work and now I can see both batteries without an issue. Going to be very interesting to see if they balance themselves better with this setup (not that I had much of an issue before) 100% sure... I made enough of them and tested enough times with my RS485 to USB to read the batteries first. Inverter Side Battery Side To say that I am overly chuffed with myself is an understatement.... I was soo worried, I was going to have to continue to rely on a 3rd party software to link the Inverter and Batteries again was annoying me but happy days!!! Hopefully this can help others going forward too!!! Hi Jay-Dee please can you assist me with my 5kw Sunsynk and Narada com. I made up the cable and confirmed that software is the same as per your post. Unfortunately I'm not getting any Coms.
July 2, 20223 yr 19 hours ago, Clifford-Theron said: Hi Jay-Dee please can you assist me with my 5kw Sunsynk and Narada com. I made up the cable and confirmed that software is the same as per your post. Unfortunately I'm not getting any Coms. Have you set the lithium mode to 16 on the inverter? Once set, you need to give your inverter a full reboot. Also as per @zivva - You need to set the dip switches as follows if you have more than one battery 100000 (master, connected to the inverter) & 010000 (slave). Batteries will also need a reboot after this change Edited July 2, 20223 yr by Jay-Dee
July 2, 20223 yr Author So I have some good news and semi bad news. The good news is that Solar Assistant is able to connect to my Narada 48NPFC100 battery BMS and read the values. I noticed that the real SOC read from the BMS can be quite different from what the inverter “estimates” it is - there can be a variance of around 15%! This is why it is crucial to get BMS comms working on the inverter. Further good news is that I also managed to get hold of the correct software for communicating with the BMS. I am not sure whether this is Shinwa or not, but here is a screenshot: Baud rate was 9600 and I can confirm all of the usual parameters are correct, eg stop bits, parity, etc. The pins I used were 2 and 3 on the RS485 port (both RS485 ports work). I do think that pins 2 and 3 on the one hand and 7 and 6 on the other are just mirrored on the port. The bad news is that I still cannot get my Deye 5kW inverter to communicate with the battery using the BMS485 port and Lithium mode 16. At least there is hope though. Either I am overlooking something or Deye simply does not support this BMS (yet). I have crimped yet another cable and using inverter pins 2,1 to battery pins 2,3, and used my network cable tester to verify. I am not using GND. I do reset the battery using the reset switch every time I attempt a new combination (I did this during load shedding at night and caused an outage at my home, unhappy wife, etc). I am still hopeful that I can get this to work and will send Deye support the above details. If anyone else has gotten their Deye inverter to speak to their Narada battery with the BMS in the above screenshot (TP-ND1530), please let me know! Edited July 2, 20223 yr by SolarConvert
July 2, 20223 yr Author 1 hour ago, Jay-Dee said: Once set, you need to give your inverter a full reboot. Hi @Jay-Dee, what do you do to reboot the inverter?
July 3, 20223 yr 10 hours ago, SolarConvert said: Hi @Jay-Dee, what do you do to reboot the inverter? For me, I turned the inverter off on the switch at the bottom... Then dropped AC input, turn the PV and batteries off and within a few seconds that inverter turns off completely. Then turned it all back on. I dont know if this is needed but from reading the thread before I got it working, it mentioned to reboot... So this is my reboot I dont know if it is needed on the inverter too but definitely the batteries when changing the dip switches Edited July 3, 20223 yr by Jay-Dee
July 3, 20223 yr By the name TP-ND1530 & the look of the software, chance is it's not a Shinwa but a Tian Power BMS. I should have some info somewhere from the time I was looking for the software before getting it from Narada ...
July 3, 20223 yr Revov is using Tian BMS on some of their batteries. You could try the setup attached ... Edited July 3, 20223 yr by zivva
July 3, 20223 yr 21 hours ago, SolarConvert said: Further good news is that I also managed to get hold of the correct software for communicating with the BMS. I am not sure whether this is Shinwa or not, but here is a screenshot: That looks promising, care to share the software with us?
July 3, 20223 yr Author 2 hours ago, zivva said: Revov is using Tian BMS on some of their batteries. You could try the setup attached ... Looks like it may well be a Tian Power BMS! I am really impressed with how you identity multiple BMS types I tried using Lithium protocol 9 and was really surprised when I saw the real SOC coming through on the Deye inverter! I could almost not believe it. However, the battery temperature was reported as 330℃, so obviously the data was not all correct. Whilst I was looking at the other values, BOOM, lights out, wife unhappy again! Yeah I shouldn't have tried this again during a grid outage. I didn't learn my lesson the first time. The inverter disconnected from the battery and reported error F51 (W phase grid current DC component over current). Apparently this error has never happened so far according to the Deye manual. It took me a while to switch settings back to not use Lithium mode at all, for the inverter to reconnect to the battery and for me to calm the wife. I mean come on, why won't she understand that getting BMS comms working is crucial? 🤔 Anyway, I think I'm done testing for the night. This was progress at least. My conclusion is that Deye/Sunsynk might not support Narada using Tian Power BMS with Lithium mode 16. And yes, don't set it to Lithium mode 9 during a grid outage
July 3, 20223 yr Author 2 hours ago, WannabeSolarSparky said: That looks promising, care to share the software with us? Here you go. BMS-ND_Gyro-V1.1.634-32-13.zip
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