I have an inverex mks 5kva and I tried connecting it to my laptop via ethernet cable and downloaded mpptracker in my laptop but nothing showed up on my screen. Do I have to do some settings? The communication cable came with the inverter had an rs232 port on one side and LAN port on the other (picture of which is attached below) and I did not have rs232 port in my laptop so I had to use an ethernet cable to connect my inverter to the laptop.

Oh, no, you must NOT connect an ethernet cable from your laptop to that port on the inverter. You could cause damage. It uses the same connector, but is definitely not the same.

What you need is a USB to RS232 cable plugged into the cable that came with the Inverter and hope that you haven't damaged anything.

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

Oh, no, you must NOT connect an ethernet cable from your laptop to that port on the inverter. You could cause damage. It uses the same connector, but is definitely not the same.

What you need is a USB to RS232 cable plugged into the cable that came with the Inverter and hope that you haven't damaged anything.

pic of the cable that came with the inverter is posted below. the inverter only has an ethernet port posted below. The picture of the inverter is also posted below. 

My inverter does not have a USB port so I had to use to the cable that came with the inverter, picture of which is posted below.

The inverter has an RJ45 socket, which is the same as those used for ethernet, but it is definitely not an Ethernet port. Those connectors are cheap and very common, as are the tools to make up your own cable, which is why a lot of people use them for many different purposes.

That inverter is using it for RS232 comms, which is why it comes with a cable that has an RJ45 jack on one end and a DB9 connector on the other. So you need an RS232 port to communicate with that inverter.

Plugging an ethernet cable from your PC's LAN port into the RS232 port on the inverter could cause damage, you must definitely not do that.

On 2020/06/26 at 1:12 PM, Stanley said:

The inverter has an RJ45 socket, which is the same as those used for ethernet, but it is definitely not an Ethernet port. Those connectors are cheap and very common, as are the tools to make up your own cable, which is why a lot of people use them for many different purposes.

That inverter is using it for RS232 comms, which is why it comes with a cable that has an RJ45 jack on one end and a DB9 connector on the other. So you need an RS232 port to communicate with that inverter.

Plugging an ethernet cable from your PC's LAN port into the RS232 port on the inverter could cause damage, you must definitely not do that.

A quick update.

I found an old laptop and installed mpptracker and used the cable that came with the inverter but nothing seems to happen. That com port could only be for connecting to another inverter and it does not have a usb port so it might not have that feature. but if this is the case, why did the company provide the software cd and the wire with it?

On 2020/06/26 at 5:12 AM, Stanley said:

The inverter has an RJ45 socket, which is the same as those used for ethernet, but it is definitely not an Ethernet port. Those connectors are cheap and very common, as are the tools to make up your own cable, which is why a lot of people use them for many different purposes.

That inverter is using it for RS232 comms, which is why it comes with a cable that has an RJ45 jack on one end and a DB9 connector on the other. So you need an RS232 port to communicate with that inverter.

Plugging an ethernet cable from your PC's LAN port into the RS232 port on the inverter could cause damage, you must definitely not do that.

why do they provide a socket that's not for the same use case everybody in the planet uses it for, that's such a bad practice from the inverter manufacturers.

i had an employee do what you said not to do, and damage it and i can't blame him, because everybody would've done the same with that port, and in this case scenario NO cable was issued by the inverter company, so it was just a port with an ethernet shape port no description no text but a "communication" label, this isn't right...

On 2024/11/27 at 3:05 AM, GonTar said:

why do they provide a socket that's not for the same use case everybody in the planet uses it for,

Because it's cheap!  🐤🐥🐦