Hi guys,

I am new to the forum and have done some "trawling" amongst previous posts  but was unable to find a definitive answer.  I would appreciate any guidance/assistance.

Like most people on the forum, I have a requirement to monitor my Inverter/charge rate/battery voltage, etc. on a Raspberry Pi 3. 

From what I could find, it seems there is only 1 option available being:

ICC software - http://iccsoftware.co.za/

from Centurion Solar.

The current price today appears to be R879 based on the current ZAR/USD exchange rate.  I do appreciate that they need to have a return in terms of development hours invested and agree that the application has awesome functionality.  I am however only interested in the basics whilst I am at home and do not necessarily require all functionality available in the software. 

 

I would appreciate it if you could advise whether there is any other software out there that one can use on a Raspberry for monitoring as mentioned above.

 

Regards

Conroy

Well, to monitor an axpert, it is not neccesary an Rpi; you can use a ESP32, for example, which is cheaper. I would say it depends on how much valuable is your time. 

Hi Javi,

Tx for your comment.  I agree, ESP is much cheaper.  Is there software available for the ESP that I can use to monitor?

 

Regards

Conroy

A LOT of work went into developing ICC Software. You can run it on any Windows OS as well. I ran mine on a MiniPC with Win10. It used about 5W which is about the same as RPI. As monitoring your system though I don't think you'll find better. Aftersales support is Excellent.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Conroy said:

Hi Javi,

Tx for your comment.  I agree, ESP is much cheaper.  Is there software available for the ESP that I can use to monitor?

 

Regards

Conroy

I dont know if there is a specific software. What I did is to send QPIGS comand and see response. You extract a los of data. I have tested Axpert-Arduino(ATMEGA328), Axpert-ESP32, and Axpert ESP-01. It depends on what you are used to. What you always will need is a RS232-TTL adapter, since Axpert RS232 TX/RX is -6V(1logic)+13V(0logic), and Arduino is TX/RX +5V/0V, or ESP is 3.3/0V.

Also, you can develop what you can imagine. For example, you can change ABS voltage, according to battery temperature, if lead acid is. Ypu can activate relays, or TRIAC, a lot of things.

Edited January 11, 20197 yr by Javi Martínez

As an alternative, this one works quite well: https://github.com/manio/skymax-demo

This one also works well: https://github.com/JosefKrieglstein/AxpertControl

Here's one for an ESP8266: https://github.com/scottwday/InverterOfThings

I use this: https://github.com/opengd/solar-sis

But it's easier to download and install the ISO from here: http://diytechandrepairs.nu/raspberry-solar/

 

All these project are open source so you can modify it a bit if you want to

I see this is quite an old thread, but I thought I'll post it here.  ICC Pi software is now on special for only R500, which I think is quite a reasonable price to pay for it.