Have anyone tried to hook up a Victron MPPT to the Solar Assistant unit? 

I have a Axpert inverter of which I do not use the internal MPPT?

I have installed a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 150/85-Tr VE.Can Solar Charge Controller which I can only see via the bluetooth app.

Further to the OP, 

I am essentially wondering if I get a Victron MPPT and create a V.E Smart Network between it and the Shunt.

If I then connect the shunt to Solar assistant via a VE direct To USB cable.

Would solar assistant then pull in the battery data from the shunt and the solar data from the mppt?

In fact, is there anything I can do to bring in the solar data from the MPPT to Solar Assistant? 

Edited April 25, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

Possibly with some rejigging but SA state that Victron is not currently supported

Tell me what to rejigging hehe. 

I know SA can read data from the Smart Shunt via the VE.Direct to USB cable connected to the Raspberry Pi. 

But I wonder if it will also pull the data of the MPPT via the Shunt, if the Shunt and MPPT is in a VE Bluetooth Network. 

The alternative is to use the Mecer 3Kw hooked up to the Raspberry Pi running Solar Assistant and then install a secondary Raspberry Pi to run Venus OS and then connect the MPPT and the Smart Shunt to that. 

But them I am running two half systems.

Unless... if Venus OS has MQTT, I could combine SA and Venus into a Home Assistant dashboard or just whip something up with PHP and Grafana... any of you run Venus OS? 

Pulled the trigger, will see how to make this MPPT talk to SA.

37 minutes ago, Chris.P.Bacon said:

Pulled the trigger, will see how to make this MPPT talk to SA.

Brave man... Keep us posted on the progress

Now just waiting for VE to USB cable.

I wish solar assistant would come back to people I've sent so many emails asking for assistance on this or if this is something in the pipeline etc.

The raspberry pi has Bluetooth soon theory it should be able to talk to the Victron equipment via that protocol too.

 

Edited May 20, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

4 hours ago, Superfly said:

You should connect an earth cable to the MPPT

100%, will do (ACDC like always, had no stock) - I do have a combiner box upstream with earth leakage etc in.

Edited May 20, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

4 hours ago, Superfly said:

would be interesting to see if VE.Direct does communicate with the RasPI. 

Well ran into my first issue.

Venus OS on the Raspberry Pi cannot connect to the Bluetooth network of the Solar Charge Controller and the Shunt, idea is dead in the water. I don't want to run cables all over the place.

My idea was

(Victron devices on VE Network) via Bluetooth -> Venus OS (RPi 1) + MQTT Broker -> Solar Assistant (RPi 2)

But seems Venus OS cannot talk to the Bluetooth Victron devices, which is absolutely stupid. 

GATT support, down the rabbit hole we go, MQTT to SA from here.

fokkit boys. calling it a night.

 

 

Do we know who the creator of Solar Assistant is or how to reach him?

I want to submit code for him to make this work in Solar Assistant natively.

Edited May 20, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

4 hours ago, Superfly said:

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/170165/venus-os-and-smart-solar-bluetooth-connection.html

 

Dunno why the guy's going on about Cerbo when the question relates to RasPi , but assume the Smart MPPT can't connect via BT to Venus OS. Needs Victron Connect.

It is a pitty, becuase the hardware clearly supports it, as demonstrated here:
 

I am able to pull data from the SmartShunt and the MPPT via Bluetooth using C.  So it does work, but either Victron wants to make money selling cables or they will add this in a future software update. 

My plan now is to set up an MQTT broker, I will use a C program to read the data from the Shunt and MPPT over Bluetooth, then send that data to Solar Assistant using its built-in MQTT service. I will leave the Venus OS out of the equation for now as it offers nothing in this scenario. 

I emailed SA some code, hoping they might build it into SA natively, but until then I will use a broker to fetch over Bluetooth and broadcast over TCP. This means I can also set up my own Grafana dashboard if I want to dive into more nuanced statistics. 

I will keep everyone posted.

The following data can begotten with my program, which I think should be sufficient for Solar Assistant's graphs if I sent via MQTT
 

SmartShunt.cp And SmartMPPT.cp 

Reading data in real-time over Bluetooth using C.

{
  "name": "SmartShunt",
  "address": "D8F1837D-2827-239B-97C2-114A2C125DH0",
  "rssi": -79,
  "payload": {
    "aux_mode": "midpoint_voltage",
    "consumed_ah": 19.8,
    "current": 0.0,
    "midpoint_voltage": 13.55,
    "model_name": "SmartShunt 500A/50mV",
    "remaining_mins": 65535,
    "soc": 91.5,
    "voltage": 27.2
  }
}

{
  "name": "SmartSolar MPPT",
  "address": "691DE7G5-5B72-F212-D1E7-FCA6F32DF4CF",
  "rssi": -82,
  "payload": {
    "battery_charging_current": 15.0, // Ah
    "battery_voltage": 27.21, // V
    "charge_state": "absorption",
    "model_name": "SmartSolar MPPT 150|35", // Model
    "solar_power": 416, // Solar In
    "yield_today": 950 // Solar yield today
  }
}

Edited May 21, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

15 hours ago, Chris.P.Bacon said:

fokkit boys. calling it a night.

 

 

Do we know who the creator of Solar Assistant is or how to reach him?

I want to submit code for him to make this work in Solar Assistant natively.

+27 87 093 1601

You can whatsapp that number 

Solar Assistant doesn't allow the pushing of data. 

I am able to read everything from the Victron devices over Bluetooth, but cannot push to Solar Assistant, so will need to set up something like Home Assistant and then push data via MQTT from Solar Assistant and bridge data from the C app I wrote also to Home Assistant.

Pitty.

[20:20:50][D][sensor:092]: 'Current': Sending state -0.65300 A with 3 decimals of accuracy
[20:20:50][D][sensor:092]: 'Consumed Ah': Sending state -58.50000 Ah with 1 decimals of accuracy
[20:20:50][D][sensor:092]: 'State of charge': Sending state 71.80000 % with 1 decimals of accuracy
[20:21:57][D][sensor:092]: 'Battery Voltage': Sending state 26.26000 V with 2 decimals of accuracy
[20:21:57][D][sensor:094]: 'Yield Today': Sending state 3.19000 kWh with 2 decimals of accuracy
[20:21:57][D][sensor:094]: 'PV Power': Sending state 0.00000 W with 0 decimals of accuracy

 

Weirdly, I can push to Solar Assistant's MQTT broker. But Solar Assistant is not proving a way to "fetch" the data and use it. However I can fetch it with Home Assistant from Solar Assistant. 

Odd, they must just enable the topics sub, then this can actually work.

 

Victron MPPT and Shunt -> Bluetooth -> ESP32 -> MQTT -> Solar Assistant -> MQTT -> Home Assistant.

This means the data is available for fetching via Solar Assistant if their devs enable it.

The easiest by far will be to just do Victron MPPT -> VE Direct to USB -> Solar Assistant. 

The data is well documented SA must just prioritize this.

Documentation for those interested;

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/VE.Direct-Protocol-3.32.pdf

Edited May 26, 20233 yr by Chris.P.Bacon

On 2023/05/26 at 10:17 AM, Chris.P.Bacon said:

The easiest by far will be to just do Victron MPPT -> VE Direct to USB -> Solar Assistant. 

The data is well documented SA must just prioritize this.

Documentation for those interested;

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/VE.Direct-Protocol-3.32.pdf

Thanks so much for taking time to document this. I have the same use case as you and it is frustrating seeing a developer completely ignore offer to help improve their product. I am interested in solar assistance but my concern is how rigid the whole product is. I can understand if it is a one man show but it just goes to highlights the benefit of free and Open source software.

The inability to export data to an open energy monitoring system like pvout or emoncms is among the list of issues I have with the product and which again aligns with the vendor lock in mindset of many closed product.