6 hours ago, JacquesVDM said:

Does he buy via iccsoftware.co.za/ or centurionsolar.co.za ?   (So that he does not have an issue later on with upgrades and support)

As I understand it, the product forked.

Forking happens routinely in software when there are differences of opinion among the developers. For example, Firefox split off the Mozilla project because some developers felt that Mozilla was becoming too bloated. OpenBSD (on which OSX is also based) forked from NetBSD when the founder was asked to resign due to personality clashes. The X.org graphical user system used on unix systems (including that Raspberry Pi) forked from XFree86 because of a difference in opinion about how it should be licensed. Egcs forked from gcc (the gnu compiler collection) and turned out to be so successful that it became the new gcc. GPG (Gnu privacy guard) forked from PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) due to trust issues. MS SQL server is technically a fork of Sybase... because Micro$oft.

But perhaps the best analogy would be the story of LibreOffice. This started out as Star Office (which was pretty decent... I used version 3.0 back in 1997). Sun Microsystems acquired the product in 1999, and then Oracle (they come up a lot when things go bad) acquired Sun in 2011, renamed the product and discontinued it. At this point a group within Google forked the product, essentially saving it, and called it LibreOffice. You can judge from the name precisely how they felt about the matter.

Now with all that said, I cannot tell you which side of the fork to go with... but I am still of the opinion... going for how long now, at least six years?... that an opensource variant is needed, and that suppliers should then charge for providing the service of assembling it and hosting the online platform side of it (software as a service). That's just my personal opinion. Also, I remain concerned about the use of EmonCMS. EmonCMS is licensed under the Affero license. It's a pretty restrictive one.

Edited February 23, 20206 yr by plonkster

@JacquesVDM  I bought mine at its infancy when a donation was asked for. Then when Manie became the sole developer, I bought from him and have always had superb support. So my vote would go to ICCSoftware.

@plonkster Just how opensource for such a small market would be economically  viable is a mystery to me. I use mainly open source and my O/S of choice is Ubuntu. But then Mark Shuttleworth has the means to provide it as open source. Perhaps a crusade to get Microsoft to make some of their expired Windows available as open source and let's see where the hackers of the world take it. I guess they prefer charging obscene amounts for it as long as people are willing to pay. 

 

2 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

Mark Shuttleworth has the means to provide it as open source

He is not giving it away for free, he makes his money from derived services. Which is kinda my point 🙂

3 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

I guess they prefer charging obscene amounts for it as long as people are willing to pay. 

Yup, on this part I agree.

The original author of ICC wanted it to become open source. This I know for sure. The reason why it didn't happen is unfortunately a matter of hearsay, so I cannot in good faith repeat the tale without risking saying something untrue.

Let me be a bit less confrontational about this. There main thing you should be concerned about, in software, is that bus that runs over programmers. It's a common question asked of programmers, to the extent that we joke about it: What happens if you get run over by a bus?

What happens if you want a feature, but the sole developer of the software can't find the time to add it?

This is where open source excels. If the lead developer is run over by a bus (or goes to prison, or commits suicide), you're not up the creek without support. Sorry about the morbid thoughts, but that is something that needs to be considered.

@plonkster  I have never been able to figure out how open source programmers are supposed to realise a meaningful reward for all the many hours spent in creating the software. Certainly nobody else gives all their hard work away for free. Those who reaps the largest rewards from mankind, like pharmaceutical companies and specifically banks gives nothing away for free. Banks are fundamentally bankrupt and lend out many times more than the deposits they have, euphimistically called fractional reserve banking. All with the blessing of governments who need the banks in any event to couterfeit the currency in this manner. This is nowadays called quantitative easing to hide the reality and almost nobody seems to know that the government is taxing them without their knowledge. But I digress. One needs to read, amongst others, Real Money, which was published locally by the Free Market Foundation to understand this matter.

I had a chat with Manie quite a while ago and it would seem that the contribution of the guy who originally sold AICC, worked in co-operation with Manie. He apparently mainly programmed the display which is now the MQTT Windows display. Manie seems to have done most if not all the ICC programming. The other chap, whose name I forgot, became very defensive, with threats of action by patent attorneys, when TTT tried to get Manie associated or at least help him with the program he was trying to create. The drama played out on this forum for some time.

So I agree that there are risks with depending on one person, but the ICC has been working outstandingly well for me and a friend in the village. He installed it at my recommendation and has yet to regret it. But if the programmer ends up under the proverbial bus, one would just continue to use what you have until it stops. I have recently had an expensive share charting program failing after some 15 years of working perfectly. For some time it would only work on XP and I had to run it on a virtual machine. The company in the USA that created it, was listed on the NASDAQ and still exists but have stopped selling and supporting it a long time ago. So even when more than one individual is involved, one is at risk. That said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If one does not use ICC for Axpert inverters then what? Victron and other highly praised equipment with equally high prices may have alternatives but it would not solve my requirements. If you or anyone else has a suggestion, I would be covered if the bus does arrive at the wrong place at the right time, ie to meet with the programmer.

13 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

threats of action by patent attorneys

Yup... that's apparently happened more than once, but I heard the story the other way round. I feared that I might get roped into that myself in the past due to my comments on the subject.

I have particular dislike for any supplier that takes to legal bullying tactics. Another example and the reason why I'm not fond of that one either.

Edited February 24, 20206 yr by plonkster

17 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

e apparently mainly programmed the display which is now the MQTT Windows display

Also, just to clear that up: The original version of AICC was windows only and was written in Visual Basic. It then got ported to FreePascal (which is like a free version of Delphi) and this is where the second developer got involved. So I suppose that is where the disagreement comes from about who owns the code base.

@plonkster We are really digging up the past here but it is still interesting. However I still have yet to see an alternative to ICC for Axpert owners. I know they are not Victron but mine are working fine and the one that failed some time ago was repaired free of charge by Pinnacle. Reportedly the problem was condensation which is not surprising given the winter humidity on the West Coast. Delphi is another well supported development system that bit the dust although FreePascal and the graphic front end Lazarus, both open source, are still with us. Watchpower is really not great but I know of nothing else. Maybe someone will spot something useful some time or another.

 

8 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

digging up the past

Yeah, I react emotionally to this nonsense, because it was so entirely unnecessary. Well... IS... cause it's not really completely over yet for Centurion Solar. It's one reason that I wish a third opensource dog would just walk away with the bone... put an end to it.

10 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

However I still have yet to see an alternative to ICC for Axpert owners

Yup, I understand that. Another reason why I'm holding out hope that one will come.

On 2020/02/24 at 11:47 AM, ebrsa said:

I have never been able to figure out how open source programmers are supposed to realise a meaningful reward for all the many hours spent in creating the software. Certainly nobody else gives all their hard work away for free. Those who reaps the largest rewards from mankind, like pharmaceutical companies and specifically banks gives nothing away for free. Banks are fundamentally bankrupt and lend out many times more than the deposits they have, euphimistically called fractional reserve banking. All with the blessing of governments who need the banks in any event to couterfeit the currency in this manner. This is nowadays called quantitative easing to hide the reality and almost nobody seems to know that the government is taxing them without their knowledge. But I digress. One needs to read, amongst others, Real Money, which was published locally by the Free Market Foundation to understand this matter.

The general idea is that it's free as in "open" not as in "free beer". Which, as @plonkster points out, means that the vendor doesn't have you over a barrel. Usually there's no license fees for the OS and DBMS, but nobody should begrudge a software vendor a reasonable per hour fee for development or support.

If you think I'm ripping you off, you have the source code and unless there's a contract between us that stipulates otherwise you can get somebody else in to maintain your systems and see how good a job they do (and know that you can't hold me to any kind of guarantee for the work the other guy does).

 

21 minutes ago, Bobster said:

nobody should begrudge a software vendor a reasonable per hour fee for development or support

Yup. Open source doesn't mean free (as in beer). It just means that the vendor gives me both the binaries (aka executables, whatever people in windows land call it) AND the original source code.

It's a bit like something wedding photographer did two decades ago (when film was still in use). They'd give you a set of beautiful photos in an expensive looking photo album, but keep the negatives. If you wanted any copies... you always had to go back to THAT photographer. Of course the public soon learned about this trick, and started looking for independent photographers that give you the photos, album AND the negatives.

🙂

 

But actually there is more to it, and I think I will write some more, much as many of you are probably tired of hearing about it.

Imagine a world where I need to buy the rights to use Pythagoras, because someone else owns it. So if I need to build a house, then I'd have to go out and buy a license so that I can make it all square. Of course this is an absurd example, but that is the point. There are some things that are so basically beneficial to people that we really should think carefully about adding a price tag to it.

Likewise, there are types of software that are non-rocket-science enough that, once they repaid their development cost, really should not have a 60USD price tag. Hence there was a time that an office suite was a new thing, expensive to produce, and warranted a high price tag... and now we are in a time where LibreOffice is available to all and one sometimes wonders how M$ can still charge close to 2k for the same thing.

So back in the day, the first ICC guy decided that he's made his money back (he spent some on widgets and things) and wanted to make it opensource. His partner disagreed. Some things transpired, ugly things were said... and here we are, years later... and go ask the guys who found themselves held over a barrel recently when the most recent to partners got into a disagreement.

Am I really that controversial in calling for a "disruptor" or a game changer? An uber to the taxi business or a AirBnB to the hotel business?

🙂

 

I can only speak from my experience, stay away from Manie's ICC, support is a nightmare and is almost always given tardive and with a bitter taste. I have tried many time to give feedback about the program to developer but in his wisdom has taken as herasment. I wait another player in this league.

About @Centurionsolar only good words, I have benefit from his support many times despite the fact that my copy of icc was bought from Manie. Respect and consideration.

Whatever semantics are used in discussing "open source", the fact remains that the software is available for use without cost to the user. Whoever bought AICC or later ICC did not buy open source and if they have any issues, it surely is between them and the developer. Whether the original developer of AICC, who later joined forces with Manie, released the source code with consent of his then partner Manie, is not clear. As I recall, he denied having released the source  code on this forum but it is some time ago so I may be wrong. Logic dictates that if he had a partner who contributed to the code it stands to reason that both partners would have to agree to release the code as open source. But if one partner denied that he released it, if I indeed remember correctly, and the other partner did not agree, then who published the code in the public domain. 

Any item that anyone produced, whether hardware or software, will be priced at what the market will pay. That is why the big tech companies like Microsoft manages to continue charging obscene amounts for their products. If the ICC price rises to double the present price tomorrow, fewer buyers will pay that price. However if a competitive product hits the market, the price will come down or it will disappear if the developer does not deem any further work worth his while. Same as MS-DOS and every other MS operating system thereafter up to Win 7. That is how the free market works, supply and demand balancing and no exchange will take place unless both parties believe it to be in their interest. 

I see no reason why Manie or anyone else should be expected to make their products available for free. If they so decide then anyone  may freely use it as I do with Linux and other open source software. But thus far I have not seen a competitive product to ICC except one from the distant past developed by a fellow called Ed, I forgot his surname. That disappeared very suddenly for whatever reason and I guess anyone who bought it was, left stranded. If one has strong views on the issue, then put in some long hours to create a competitive program and release it as freeware. 

Edited February 27, 20206 yr by ebrsa

4 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

the fact remains that the software is available for use without cost to the user

Indeed. It does lower the amount of income, since a certain subset of sufficiently skilled users will now do their own thing. The same happens with the Victron units: A small number of users roll their own with a Rasspberry Pi, a Beaglebone black, or a Nanopi (they do amazing stuff actually!), but the vast majority of people will buy a ready-made solution because 1) they lack the skills and/or not their core business/hobby, or 2) their time is worth more than that. I predict the same thing would happen with ICC, should it be made more open: There would still be value in a packaged solution (like Centurion Solar sells) that includes all the cabling and saves you all that time.

9 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

As I recall, he denied having released the source  code

Truth be told... I think that was a lie. I'm pretty sure it was. Nobody makes a targeted hack like this for an obscure product like this. A friendship went sour, and it was an attempt at breaking the back of the ugly dragon that emerged from the dispute... it failed.

12 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

will be priced at what the market will pay

Yes. Over a barrel. Which is why I love disruptors so much...

13 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

should be expected to make their products available for free

They don't have to. What I hope for is an alternative product that rips the plug from the boat... cause I am so tired of the nonsense that came from this, the he-said-the-other-guy-said plus the legal threats, screenshots of Whatsapp discussions passed around, threat of violence... break the back of the cartel I say.

@plonkster  Just ignore the whole issue and leave it to those involved. You will just shorten your life with stress. Given my substantially advanced age it is something I am acutely aware of so I can speak with some knowledge on the matter. Meanwhile I find it most convenient to control my inverters from my phone or tablet to access ICC on the RPi with the free RealVNC viewer. 

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

You will just shorten your life with stress

True... but every now and then some exasperated person asks the question asked here (which one do I buy?) and I can't keep my trap shut 🙂

@plonkster I have often wondered if some comments published on this forum are not grounds for  defamation litigation. It is after all a criminal offence in RSA so one merely has to lay a charge with the SAPS and justice will follow at no cost to the aggrieved party. Thin ice indeed. 

6 minutes ago, ebrsa said:

grounds for  defamation litigation

Yup. All you have to do to severely mess up someone's life is threaten with such action. It doesn't even have to be actual defamation (the protection is only for persons, not for products for example). But I digress... I maintain that it was unnecessary. We all have times in our lives when we acted badly.... that is okay. Own up, do better. I myself have called ICC a "hack job" in the past. I was wrong. I was an ass. There, I said it. I still think the present mess (with the confusion for customers) is not a good thing though. OK... I'm out 🙂

 

What exactly does this ICC software do? I am very surprised that nobody has written an Axpert interfacer for Venus?

55 minutes ago, P1000 said:

What exactly does this ICC software do? I am very surprised that nobody has written an Axpert interfacer for Venus?

Axpert inverters have this serial comms protocol you can use to get information from them, things like voltages, power, and so on. Very similar to what Venus does. It then does a few calculations (I think?), and it uploads the information to an emoncms site on the internet, so you can draw charts from it and so on. There is also a visual dashboard that shows you what is going on... again, much like with a Venus device. It also has the ability to read a Victron BMV to get real state of charge information (because Axpert inverters can't calculate accurate SOC values, they estimate it from the voltage... poorly). The final part of the puzzle -- so I understand -- is that it can tell the inverter to connect/disconnect from the grid based on the SOC it reads from the BMV. It does this by changing the solar priority on the inverter.

Writing an interface that hooks the inverter into Venus would be very easy, but it has to be done by an independent hobbyist type. The only reason for anyone else to do it... would be if that somehow sells more blue inverters... and I just don't see that happening.

32 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Writing an interface that hooks the inverter into Venus would be very easy, but it has to be done by an independent hobbyist type.

Yes, that is what I mean.

To write an interfacer for emonCMS should not take more than a couple of hours. If I had an axpert, I would have written one already...

1 minute ago, P1000 said:

To write an interfacer for emonCMS should not take more than a couple of hours. If I had an axpert, I would have written one already...

You could just let it post the data to VRM...

The more important part is to make the Axpert show up as a com.victronenergy.inverter or a com.victronenergy.vebus service on dbus, with the minimum paths required for that. Once you do that... it shows up in the GUI, etc etc. This would take only a couple of hours...

So i got the ICC software from MAnie with a 7 day trial license. 

Plonkster please tell me how to bypass this ..... Just joking

I have very strange results appearing. This morning i had a 9000w solar production from 9x 330 panels. 

During peak production times from 10am i get huge ammounts of faults coming throught telling me undervolts. 

On the graph my solar production drops away for periods of time 

 

@P1000 I have now been using ICC since it became available, I guess about 3 years or so and AICC, its predecessor before that. I have 2 x 4KW Axpert (Proline rebrand) inverters in parallel and have never bothered to use emonCMS. ICC runs on a Raspberry Pi, the dashboard which I access from my PC, mobile phone or tablet with RealVNC, works worldwide. I use a router which I flashed with Gargoyle firmware which has a VPN server via which I connect to my LAN with the portable devices.  I also have the MQTT remote dashboard on a Win10 PC but have managed to run it with Wine on my main PC which has Ubuntu18.04LTS as operating system. There is in addition a BMV700 (I still regret not having bought the BMV702 or 712) connected to the RPi. ICC does all all the switching between solar/batteries and grid based on time and state of charge. Amost all settings on the inverters can be changed on the dashboard, such as times it switches, minimum and maximum SOC for switching, charge rates for grid and solar etc. Better take a look at the dashboard photos on the ICC website, iccsoftware.co.za.The only setting that I have to do on the inverters is the time the chargers, MPPT and grid, will maintain the bulk charging voltage. I use this only because the I have not managed te set the BMV700 to fully charge the batteries. But there may be afundemental problem because my Trojan T105 batteries requires a bulk charging voltage of 59.3V and the Axpert maximum is 58.4V. So I just keep the chargers at 58.4V for 120 minutes. Right now, it being summer and mostly sunny on the West Coast where I live, ICC switches to grid at 17h00 and back to solar/battery at 23h00. My battery bank is 450AH and minimum voltage is set to 77% SOC, so if that is ever reached ICC will switch to grid until the batteries reach 82% SOC with input priorities set to solar then batteries then grid. My batteries are usually at around 80% SOC in the mornings when the panels start charging them. This with a base load of around 400-450W during the night.

I guess emonCMS is great to add additional guages and displays as some members have published on the forum. So far the ones offered on the ICC dashboard hav met my requirements for me.

@Krokkedil on the advice of Jaco, the original developer of AICC, I set Axpert parameter 12 to 44V and parameter 13 to 48V, both the lowest values offered. Higher values confuses ICC but that presupposes that one has a Victron BMV7xx connected to the Raspberry Pi to ensure that ICC is fed accurate data which the Axpert is not good at. Parameter 46, the low cut-off voltage is set to 46V but your battery type, parameter 5, has to be set to USR for that to be available. Also both my inverters have been flashed with the Coulomb/Weber firmware version 73.00e which works great. I hope this improves the readings you are getting as it did for me.

Edited February 27, 20206 yr by ebrsa