Do I have to remove "solar-assistant" to run the Nodered environment?

[cyber7]

As per the topic:

Will I have to remove the Solar Assistant PI before I can start with Nodered?

Some of the things I envision to do:

1. Scripting - ability to distinguish between weekdays and weekends for geyser usage.
2. The ability to see both my PV Power devices.
3. a different dashboard...

I was also wondering if I could not just make up a RJ45 "duplicator" (1-to-2 device), not a splitter, to read the information from the Inverter by 2 devices?

regards

Aubrey

[Shadders]

Hi, to my knowledge yes if you are wanting to run nodered on the same pi that solar assitant is currently running on. Solar assistant is designed purely as an inverter monitor with some control.

You can use a second pi to run your automation and control and read the solar assitant values via mqtt and not have to use a splitter? In any case adding another device to read your inverter depends on what protocol your inverter is communicating with. I don't have enough experience to comment on the specifics but sharing your hardware details will help those better qualified to comment.

[Kalahari Meerkat]

59 minutes ago, cyber7 said:

wondering if I could not just make up a RJ45 "duplicator" (1-to-2 device)

Modbus RS485 connection can only have one master, so having 2 devices query the inverter would not work...

[cyber7]

On 2022/04/14 at 9:14 AM, Shadders said:

Hi, to my knowledge yes if you are wanting to run nodered on the same pi that solar assitant is currently running on. Solar assistant is designed purely as an inverter monitor with some control.

You can use a second pi to run your automation and control and read the solar assitant values via mqtt and not have to use a splitter? In any case adding another device to read your inverter depends on what protocol your inverter is communicating with. I don't have enough experience to comment on the specifics but sharing your hardware details will help those better qualified to comment.

OK, what would I use on the 2nd PI to do the automation?  I already have a working Home Assistant reading the MQTT values, so I presume that will be it?  Will I be able to use other people's dashboards?

[Shadders]

On 2022/04/15 at 1:55 PM, cyber7 said:

OK, what would I use on the 2nd PI to do the automation?  I already have a working Home Assistant reading the MQTT values, so I presume that will be it?  Will I be able to use other people's dashboards?

You can use Nodered or Home Assistant, these are the two most popular I am aware of and if you are already using Home Assistant that makes sense.  I don't know of any limitations using other people's dashboards but I haven't done any work in Home Assistant, I use Nodered.

[cyber7]

On 2022/04/17 at 7:56 PM, Shadders said:

You can use Nodered or Home Assistant, these are the two most popular I am aware of and if you are already using Home Assistant that makes sense.  I don't know of any limitations using other people's dashboards but I haven't done any work in Home Assistant, I use Nodered.

Going to try nodered, as the "dash" of HA is a tad limiting.  Will start looking at the Nodered environemt soon...

ps - will I be able to run nodered in a VM or do I need to run is on a PI?

[Shadders]

23 hours ago, cyber7 said:

will I be able to run nodered in a VM or do I need to run is on a PI

I am running my nodered instance directly on my pi but I do know it's possible to run it in a windows environment so I see no reason it cannot be run in a VM.

[Denarius]

On 2022/04/14 at 8:57 AM, cyber7 said:

Some of the things I envision to do:

1. Scripting - ability to distinguish between weekdays and weekends for geyser usage.
2. The ability to see both my PV Power devices.
3. a different dashboard...

I noticed in the latest solar assistant beta they have started adding the ability to change inverter settings:

https://solar-assistant.io/help/home-assistant/adjust-settings

I've started playing with the home assistant automations and it does cater for everything I wanted to do.  To some extent it reduces the need for node red.  With home assistant I can also build custom dashboards that combine solar assistant data with data from other devices.

Seems like solar assistant features are available first to voltronic/axpert inverters then afterwards for deye/sunsynk.

[WannabeSolarSparky]

On 2022/04/19 at 9:40 AM, cyber7 said:

ps - will I be able to run nodered in a VM or do I need to run is on a PI?

Nodered On Windows