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Posted

This is my personal opinion of a Hubble Cloudlink device I purchased and might be of use to someone considering buying one. 

First up my setup:
1 x Sunsynk 8kW
2 x Hubble AM-2

I do have a raspberry pi connected to my Sunsynk RS485 port which is sending data to my home assistant server so I only wanted the cloudlink for battery data and firmware updates, so I won't be going into the cloudlinks ability to show any of that data.

So first up was installation. There's a nice enough setup guide but it's not exactly clear, well it wasn't to me anyway, what to connect where. I knew I needed to plug the RJ11 cable from the cloudlink serial to the primary batteries RS232 but wasn't to sure if I needed to plug the current cable going from the the inverter to the battery into the cloudlink CAN as well. If you just want the battery data, it just needs the RJ11 from the serial port on the cloudlink into the AM-2's RS232 port.

After following the guide, registering on the portal, claiming the device and setting it up for wifi I could login to the portal but everything was showing as not connected. You need to open the remote console to the cloudlink (this is a small icon on the tile with the pic of the cloudlink, the 2nd icon): 

image.png.c64feb265c9f9801ccce4ebf3e23e6f5.png

 

then go into device settings and then select what each port is connected to as is applicable. In my case that involves selecting "Battery" from the "Serial Conn To." dropdown and saving which reboots the device. The cloudlink then shows battery as connected and it correctly picked up 2 battery packs and was displaying a SOC.In short my device settings now look like this, with a single cable from serial on cloudlink to the RS232 port on the battery.

image.png.b4d4c61e5ef440950ca2fa39675e9b55.png

 

With basic setup out the way lets take a look at the portal and the data offered. I should note at this point that I actually prefer simple to see at a glance over super complicated, so I  love the 4 gauges on the SunSynk home screen and my home assistant main dashboard looks like this:

image.png.478914c77e085d734c1f9dad718048b2.png

I can get more detailed info if I need but I usually only want to see what is going on at a glance and this works well for me. Now the cloudlink dashboard, well it's not what can be described as pretty, and don't try opening it on a mobile device - it actually doesn't display badly just anytime you're on a graph you can't scroll since that does something on the graph,  but does it have the functionality we want? This is the default view:

image.thumb.png.0499de9da382195a9b8afe32e7ed8e58.png

Now please bear in mind mine is going to look a bit empty since I only want/care about battery data, and even though you have to select what you're connected to the cloudlinks dashboard doesn't hide the non applicable graphs so there's going to be a lot of empty. Now at a glance the battery does show the SOC, amps, volts and power. I should note the power figure shows in a different way to the sunsynk in that power going into (charging) the battery is a positive number whereas on the SunSynk it's a negative number. That's a good start but also the only data I can currently see.

On the battery tile there's a small Info icon, top right:

image.png.8ac4e5c32a252e6cbd2665851819c583.png


That brings up another window which looks more promising showing fields for battery firmware and SOH, not exactly data rich but only the SOH is visible:

image.thumb.png.0773c98f1723640c75f1cf6c516ce89b.png
 

Now there are some additional theme's to select at the top of the dashboard dropdown:

image.png.92b09468a7c1e207d4474cb8b7e7788f.png

The red and dark theme's both show more battery attributes than the default screen (unfortunately all empty values as well):

image.thumb.png.cc61b3ede336572ce7299048cc4da6b8.png

Unfortunately it seems like the only additional value I can see is the SOH. I have no idea what the latest firmware for the batteries is or should be but there isn't even a flag to indicate if it's up to date and I have no way of telling if it even gets firmware updates as it's supposed to. My hopes of some useful battery info like cycle counts, individual cell voltage values, high to low differences,  or anything of that nature (since this is a Hubble device speaking to a Hubble battery) seems like a stretch too far. 

There is this little section called RIOT_Cloudlink which seems to have some interesting information, it's unfortunately a bit of a moving target so you'd need to monitor it constantly to get any useful information. It does seem to show some interesting things though:

cl-fault.png.baef2044a91dd200c2178caada52bc14.pngcl-fault.png.baef2044a91dd200c2178caada52bc14.pngI_Limit.png.9dc49ad2caf504c0ef2ece371aa55486.pngcl_fault.png.2a684cbe64cac859dc829be098233ff0.png

Having said all of this my SOH was shockingly low, which I didn't realise and the cloudlink alerted me to this. After a ticket and a call with a support agent about my low SOH, it seems like they can see a whole lot more information in my case the problem was identified as master batter, cell 1, which does seem to show up in the cloudlink windows above if you're watching at the correct time. I do find it extremely strange that all the useful information is hidden and they seem to want customers to log tickets to find out anything instead of making the information available. I suspect this is just going to stretch their support staff really thin but they seem to want to do it this way.

In summary it looks like 3rd party devices like solar assistant (based on what I've seen on this forum, haven't used it myself) actually provide far more detailed info and are only lacking in the firmware update ability, assuming the cloudlink can actually do this. It's really only providing a single metric, SOH, which isn't even on a per battery level on the ui. I'm sure it's a great tool for the Hubble technicians  and if you ever need support I think having a cloudlink is going to make your life simpler whether that's enough to make this a worthwhile purchase is a decision I'll leave to the reader.
 

Posted (edited)

Honest review.
Cloudlink requires internet access - the portal is in the cloud.
The information provided by Cloudlink is limited.
A network snoop shows that Cloudlink uses mqtt to send data to the cloud.
My request to access the mqtt data stream was unsuccessful.

Hopefully Hubble can put some development resources into Cloudlink to unlock it's full potential.

Edited by system32
Posted
On 2022/04/20 at 4:37 PM, JayBee said:

This is my personal opinion of a Hubble Cloudlink device I purchased and might be of use to someone considering buying one. 

First up my setup:
1 x Sunsynk 8kW
2 x Hubble AM-2

I do have a raspberry pi connected to my Sunsynk RS485 port which is sending data to my home assistant server so I only wanted the cloudlink for battery data and firmware updates, so I won't be going into the cloudlinks ability to show any of that data.

So first up was installation. There's a nice enough setup guide but it's not exactly clear, well it wasn't to me anyway, what to connect where. I knew I needed to plug the RJ11 cable from the cloudlink serial to the primary batteries RS232 but wasn't to sure if I needed to plug the current cable going from the the inverter to the battery into the cloudlink CAN as well. If you just want the battery data, it just needs the RJ11 from the serial port on the cloudlink into the AM-2's RS232 port.

After following the guide, registering on the portal, claiming the device and setting it up for wifi I could login to the portal but everything was showing as not connected. You need to open the remote console to the cloudlink (this is a small icon on the tile with the pic of the cloudlink, the 2nd icon): 

image.png.c64feb265c9f9801ccce4ebf3e23e6f5.png

 

then go into device settings and then select what each port is connected to as is applicable. In my case that involves selecting "Battery" from the "Serial Conn To." dropdown and saving which reboots the device. The cloudlink then shows battery as connected and it correctly picked up 2 battery packs and was displaying a SOC.In short my device settings now look like this, with a single cable from serial on cloudlink to the RS232 port on the battery.

image.png.b4d4c61e5ef440950ca2fa39675e9b55.png

 

With basic setup out the way lets take a look at the portal and the data offered. I should note at this point that I actually prefer simple to see at a glance over super complicated, so I  love the 4 gauges on the SunSynk home screen and my home assistant main dashboard looks like this:

image.png.478914c77e085d734c1f9dad718048b2.png

I can get more detailed info if I need but I usually only want to see what is going on at a glance and this works well for me. Now the cloudlink dashboard, well it's not what can be described as pretty, and don't try opening it on a mobile device - it actually doesn't display badly just anytime you're on a graph you can't scroll since that does something on the graph,  but does it have the functionality we want? This is the default view:

image.thumb.png.0499de9da382195a9b8afe32e7ed8e58.png

Now please bear in mind mine is going to look a bit empty since I only want/care about battery data, and even though you have to select what you're connected to the cloudlinks dashboard doesn't hide the non applicable graphs so there's going to be a lot of empty. Now at a glance the battery does show the SOC, amps, volts and power. I should note the power figure shows in a different way to the sunsynk in that power going into (charging) the battery is a positive number whereas on the SunSynk it's a negative number. That's a good start but also the only data I can currently see.

On the battery tile there's a small Info icon, top right:

image.png.8ac4e5c32a252e6cbd2665851819c583.png


That brings up another window which looks more promising showing fields for battery firmware and SOH, not exactly data rich but only the SOH is visible:

image.thumb.png.0773c98f1723640c75f1cf6c516ce89b.png
 

Now there are some additional theme's to select at the top of the dashboard dropdown:

image.png.92b09468a7c1e207d4474cb8b7e7788f.png

The red and dark theme's both show more battery attributes than the default screen (unfortunately all empty values as well):

image.thumb.png.cc61b3ede336572ce7299048cc4da6b8.png

Unfortunately it seems like the only additional value I can see is the SOH. I have no idea what the latest firmware for the batteries is or should be but there isn't even a flag to indicate if it's up to date and I have no way of telling if it even gets firmware updates as it's supposed to. My hopes of some useful battery info like cycle counts, individual cell voltage values, high to low differences,  or anything of that nature (since this is a Hubble device speaking to a Hubble battery) seems like a stretch too far. 

There is this little section called RIOT_Cloudlink which seems to have some interesting information, it's unfortunately a bit of a moving target so you'd need to monitor it constantly to get any useful information. It does seem to show some interesting things though:

cl-fault.png.baef2044a91dd200c2178caada52bc14.pngcl-fault.png.baef2044a91dd200c2178caada52bc14.pngI_Limit.png.9dc49ad2caf504c0ef2ece371aa55486.pngcl_fault.png.2a684cbe64cac859dc829be098233ff0.png

Having said all of this my SOH was shockingly low, which I didn't realise and the cloudlink alerted me to this. After a ticket and a call with a support agent about my low SOH, it seems like they can see a whole lot more information in my case the problem was identified as master batter, cell 1, which does seem to show up in the cloudlink windows above if you're watching at the correct time. I do find it extremely strange that all the useful information is hidden and they seem to want customers to log tickets to find out anything instead of making the information available. I suspect this is just going to stretch their support staff really thin but they seem to want to do it this way.

In summary it looks like 3rd party devices like solar assistant (based on what I've seen on this forum, haven't used it myself) actually provide far more detailed info and are only lacking in the firmware update ability, assuming the cloudlink can actually do this. It's really only providing a single metric, SOH, which isn't even on a per battery level on the ui. I'm sure it's a great tool for the Hubble technicians  and if you ever need support I think having a cloudlink is going to make your life simpler whether that's enough to make this a worthwhile purchase is a decision I'll leave to the reader.
 

Great review.

Have you tried clicking on the red encircled icons?

image.thumb.png.e49b28d27e0c771e34294c1859bebbf2.png

 

Posted (edited)
13 hours ago, YellowTapemeasure said:

Great review.

Have you tried clicking on the red encircled icons?

 

 

The inverter data one brings up this (mines going to be largely empty since battery only data):
image.thumb.png.08bf23d301edba40c6df40648ae871af.png

 

and the battery storage one this:
bat.thumb.png.92e985f4a51cf16b53586af1657366e9.png

Edited by JayBee
Posted
14 hours ago, system32 said:

Honest review.
Cloudlink requires internet access - the portal is in the cloud.
The information provided by Cloudlink is limited.
A network snoop shows that Cloudlink uses mqtt to send data to the cloud.
My request to access the mqtt data stream was unsuccessful.

Hopefully Hubble can put some development resources into Cloudlink to unlock it's full potential.

That's a good point and something I forgot to mention. It needs internet access and this is how much data it has used in the uptime (not sure how accurate this is, but just to give some idea):

Uptime   9d 22h 31m 

data_usage.thumb.jpg.89148925652dd0dc0356a5f045d1ee41.jpg

Posted
2 hours ago, JayBee said:

The inverter data one brings up this (mines going to be largely empty since battery only data):
image.thumb.png.08bf23d301edba40c6df40648ae871af.png

 

and the battery storage one this:
bat.thumb.png.92e985f4a51cf16b53586af1657366e9.png

Yep same as mine, if you click here there is an adjustable realtime plot of the individual batteries' current, down to the second. I think that it's pretty cool.

image.png.786fd56098670649e0e40198e87d04ec.png

 

  • 2 months later...
Posted

Thanks @JayBee

I also have PI reporting my Kodak/Axpert to Home Assistant via MQTT but I would like to use the CloudLink to share BMS data to Home Assistant. Can I assume there is no option to forward or configure their MQTT client to a local Home Assistant installation?

If not, then I may need to look at Solar Assistant to update my Home Assistant.

Posted
1 hour ago, RoryFrancis said:

Thanks @JayBee

I also have PI reporting my Kodak/Axpert to Home Assistant via MQTT but I would like to use the CloudLink to share BMS data to Home Assistant. Can I assume there is no option to forward or configure their MQTT client to a local Home Assistant installation?

If not, then I may need to look at Solar Assistant to update my Home Assistant.

I don't believe there is, and rather sadly there's very little data to be seen on their own dashboard. Personally I think you'd be way better off with solar assistant if data is what you're after.

Posted
21 hours ago, JayBee said:

I don't believe there is, and rather sadly there's very little data to be seen on their own dashboard. Personally I think you'd be way better off with solar assistant if data is what you're after.

Thanks. Yes, I love data. 😄😄😄😄. Actually, maybe its more the power of knowing whats going on vs just blindly trusting the installation and software. I think most of us on this forum will be in the same boat.

  • 3 months later...
Posted

I am battling to get the clodlink to connect to the Sunsynk 8kw inverter. Tried both ports on the cludlink to both ports on the inverter but no luck. The red cable Hubble supplied only have 2 wires that is used. Not sure if this is correct

  • 3 months later...
  • 8 months later...
Posted

Hi

i also have the Hubble cloudlink and in my experience its not worth the money you pay for it for a few rand more you can get solar

my cloudlink is very unreliable and i reported it several times to Hubble support and the only say they are working on it  like today it have a 2 hr delay in the data and you cant change modes .

I'm saving for solar assistant now that is not cloud based a way better option to manage your Hubble battery's 

 

hubble.png

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