Monitoring & Controlling a Hybrid Solis Inverter

[MrPablo]

It's all rather odd, I don't think it's an issue with the EW11, as it did work for a while.
Are you able to login to the EW11 via WiFi, as in straight to the config page via a browser?
Perhaps a screenshot of each of the settings will shed some light.

[SonsOfHigSolar]

Yeah it's very odd. I have a bad feeling my router has banned it somehow or prevented it from getting an IP address. I've bailed on the idea and ordered an Elfin-EE11 instead and will hardwire it, then it hopefully can't be thwarted I'll let you know how it goes. Cheers.

[SonsOfHigSolar]

Dear Mr Pablo,

Got it all up and running with the EE11! How exciting! I have a few questions please about the nodered flows for changing parameters on the inverter if you don't mind please:

1) How do I find out the values that can be changed on the inverter? Is there a scan option or do you need to manually find these for the particular inverter? I can see you have values on the buffer parser nodes but are there any more that aren't on there?

2) What is the basic flow needed to change one of these values please? I'd like to practice separately to change a single value (charge current etc) before moving on to more complex commands

3) My inverter is on older firmware and doesn't have 'self use mode'. It is just on timed charging mode and then if I set that to not charge or discharge it just automatically is in self use mode (it prioritises self use of the PV and battery power etc). Do I need to change some of the parts of your flow to account for this?

Thank you and sorry for being complicated as it seems is normal!

[MrPablo]

Glad you made some progress with the ethernet version, a friend uses the same unit and has no issues.

There's a lot of modbus registers that are read only, or writable, far too many to list out here.
The good news is that there's some good documentation out there, for example:
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Brian.Coghlan/E ... 8-1854.pdf

There's a lot I haven't bothered pulling in as they were either not relevant or provide no useful data.

As for changing a value, there's a few flows you could use as reference (any with a yellow bounding box) - the key node to look at is the function node as you need to build a payload to pass to the Modbus-Flex-Write node.



In this example, the payload is an array containing:
- value: The numeric value I want to send to the inverter, in this case it's my required charge current multiplied by 10.
- fc: Function code, most writes are 6, but the linked documentation will provide further guidance.
- unitid: The modbus address of the inverter, generally 1.
- address: The register that you want to update or read, again have a look at the linked documentation.
- quantity: The number of registers to be updated. Most are 1, but some are 2 or longer due to how the data is stored.

As for point 3, I'm honestly not sure as it's not something I've seen. It could be worth getting in touch with Solis support to see if they can upgrade the firmware. I think they can send out an update stick if needed.

[MrPablo]

On a related note, I've been working on the DIY data logger that runs ESPhome.

I did a basic 3d model, 3d printed it and shoved the required components in - it works, but it's a pain to assemble and tolerances are not correct.
For v2, I decided to design a simple PCB to mount components to, making it easier to assemble, etc.




It's certainly not a professional setup, but it'll work well with the components I have. Just finalising the enclosure design whilst I wait for the PCBs to arrive in a few weeks.
Once that's done, assembly, testing and then I might be able to provide some spare units here on the forum.

[MrPablo]

One more thing before I forget! The inverter control boards are limited in terms of how many writes they can take.
Endurance is high enough that you could change a few settings each day, but if you're planning some sort of logic that writes new settings every minute or something, be warned.

There's a couple of examples of people bricking their inverters that way.

[SonsOfHigSolar]

Dear Mr Pablo,

Your DIY logger looks very cool! Let me know when you think they're available.

If I wanted to query the inverter to get the start charge and stop charge hours/minute values, how would I go about that please? Can I add to the buffer parsers you've got on the top of your flow in blue somehow?

Cheers as always!
James

[Kommando]

you'll need to install node-red-contrib-modbus.

I use this set of nodes but the future of them looks to be problematical.

All work on the current version has stopped and the new version, which is as yet to be released, looks like it will be behind a paywall.

https://github.com/BiancoRoyal/node-red ... issues/410

Stated aim is to achieve an income of $6500 per month to support a team of programmers.

If access does become restricted then as long as any current bugs do not affect your installation then you will be ok but back up all your flows and PI SD cards just in case.

Also as the nodes actually utilise

https://www.npmjs.com/package/modbus-serial

Then another set of nodes could be written to achieve the same functions.

[MrPablo]

That's one of the reasons I'm moving to an ESPhome solution instead.
I can rely on the developers more there, plus shift some of the automation directly onto the ESP device. The core aim is to make this as hands free and reliable as possible, especially in case I'm not around to troubleshoot it.

[SonsOfHigSolar]

Dear Mr Pablo,

I'm trying to set the charge times on the inverter at the moment. Do you know if the 'value' section of the msg sent to the inverter has to be an integer or can it be "05" (as it doesn't appear to be possible to send an integer of 05 as far as I can find out). The 'scheduled charge hour' and minute values will be like this in the first half of the day until 12pm... Would sending an integer of 5 set it to start charging at 5am?

And sorry, any idea how I'd get the values for the charge start hour and minutes from the buffer inverter read section of your flow please?

Cheers,
James