Great video! I also have the EG4 3KW inverter(s) (a V1 & a V2) connected to a "Frankenbank" battery setup... I want to monitor a Victron Smart shunt for power consumption and when it gets to x-KWh used - have solar assistant make the inverters charge the batteries backup by putting x-KWh back into the bank. I think I heard you say that we can't do that with this inverter model (yet)? Is that correct? Any word on when that might become available? Still building things out and am deciding if Solar Assistant will do what I want it for...
You have to use Sumry inverter name. Solar assistant is great when it works my PI died cause i restarted my battery and i think it blew the PIs power circuits and my usb cable as well :/ Seems like a fragile setup. Would rather solar assistant be software for a computer, windows or mac or at least the option. The pis are expensive now and flakey with the SD card operating systems...
Thanks for this overview. I bought the EG4 -3KW and like the inverter but I can't get their wonky monitoring software to work. This looks like an excellent workaround. Can you use the EG4 WiFi system to monitor on your Pi or do you need a hard-wire connection?
I have the same setup, although mine used the orange pi for some reason. I can’t seem to get the inverter temp to show up anywhere however. Is there a fix for that?
My Rpi died so they replaced it with orange pi. I don't have temp sense on mine as my self built battery isn't plugged in direct so solar assistant is just guessing SOC on battery voltage for now. I hope to have better connectivity to the BMS and such but for now, it works and gives enough for now.
do you have a EG4 300O inverter plugged into a grid? I plugged mine in while the PV was connected and my electrical plug started to smoke and GFI plug burned out. Did you have to change a ground binding?
Hello, I'm trying to connect the Solar Assistant Raspberry Pi to my eg4 6000ex. I saw that you have as "inverter" Sumry. Is there any other change that I need to do? I tried this setting it would not connect to the inverter.
Sumry is correct, i'm assuming its the same for eg3 3kw and the 6kw. you need your working USB cable. What do you have for that? if the USB is not connected correctly, the pi won't recognize it to connect to the inverter. mine has blinking lights on it so you can see it communicating. I had lots of trouble with it being recognized though, reboot the unit, try other usb ports. only 1 usb port on mine works out of the 4.
@@PRVRT1 Wait, so the myriad of communication cables that the EG4 comes with are not enough to get connected to the pi? I see it comes with an RJ45 to DB9 cable, right? Does that just mean I need to purchase a DB9 to USB adapter?
@@Dr.PhDeez the EG4 3000EHV comes with a wifi dongle and you use the "SmartESS" app on your phone to access the data. Getting it setup and working was a bit challenging, but I was able to get it working before switching to Solar Assistant. I must say that Solar Assistant is much nicer, though. I do not believe you can do both at the same time, as they both need a connection to the RS232 port on the inverter. Maybe it's possible, but Solar Assistant gives everything that SmartESS does plus a lot more, so I'm not pursuing doing both.
Purchase Signature Solar stuff here: signaturesolar.com/?ref=vBPxa1lWHkhTM0 and support meby doing so! Please at least check it out, click on it!
Thank you so much for this! Was exactly what I was looking for. Just hooked up my EHV to a batter yesterday and have so many pis laying around lol.
Great video!
I also have the EG4 3KW inverter(s) (a V1 & a V2) connected to a "Frankenbank" battery setup... I want to monitor a Victron Smart shunt for power consumption and when it gets to x-KWh used - have solar assistant make the inverters charge the batteries backup by putting x-KWh back into the bank. I think I heard you say that we can't do that with this inverter model (yet)? Is that correct?
Any word on when that might become available? Still building things out and am deciding if Solar Assistant will do what I want it for...
You have to use Sumry inverter name. Solar assistant is great when it works my PI died cause i restarted my battery and i think it blew the PIs power circuits and my usb cable as well :/ Seems like a fragile setup. Would rather solar assistant be software for a computer, windows or mac or at least the option. The pis are expensive now and flakey with the SD card operating systems...
Thanks for this overview. I bought the EG4 -3KW and like the inverter but I can't get their wonky monitoring software to work. This looks like an excellent workaround.
Can you use the EG4 WiFi system to monitor on your Pi or do you need a hard-wire connection?
Hardwired to pj is how it works, then wifi on pi to access from pc. Software and all for this is in some ways still in its infancy
Thank you for the video. I also have the EG4 3k inverter. Can you tell me the RS232 baud rate? I think it is 115200, but not sure.
I don't know, sorry. I didn't manually set anything.
Thanks for the great details on the monitoring system. More info on the pi device and how and where to purchase and connect it to the system?
Thanks!
solar-assistant.io
thanks, posted link to it.
I have the same setup, although mine used the orange pi for some reason. I can’t seem to get the inverter temp to show up anywhere however. Is there a fix for that?
My Rpi died so they replaced it with orange pi. I don't have temp sense on mine as my self built battery isn't plugged in direct so solar assistant is just guessing SOC on battery voltage for now. I hope to have better connectivity to the BMS and such but for now, it works and gives enough for now.
do you have a EG4 300O inverter plugged into a grid? I plugged mine in while the PV was connected and my electrical plug started to smoke and GFI plug burned out. Did you have to change a ground binding?
Yes i feed mine with grid so when there is no solar they can fall back. I didnt change the grounding in the units but i believe i did ground the cases
Hello, I'm trying to connect the Solar Assistant Raspberry Pi to my eg4 6000ex. I saw that you have as "inverter" Sumry. Is there any other change that I need to do? I tried this setting it would not connect to the inverter.
Sumry is correct, i'm assuming its the same for eg3 3kw and the 6kw. you need your working USB cable. What do you have for that? if the USB is not connected correctly, the pi won't recognize it to connect to the inverter. mine has blinking lights on it so you can see it communicating. I had lots of trouble with it being recognized though, reboot the unit, try other usb ports. only 1 usb port on mine works out of the 4.
@@MicahGallant managed to get it working with the rj45 to db9 and a db9 to usb that I had laying around. Voltronic as the model for Inverter.
@@PRVRT1 ah great, thats good for the next person. So the 6000 is different then the 3000 in that regard.
@@PRVRT1 Wait, so the myriad of communication cables that the EG4 comes with are not enough to get connected to the pi? I see it comes with an RJ45 to DB9 cable, right? Does that just mean I need to purchase a DB9 to USB adapter?
Is there any way to access the data using an API?
I'm not aware of a way but I haven't looked into it.
@@MicahGallant thanks.
Where did you buy it from? Is the data that much better than the data on the EG4 app? That may be a bad question since I don't have my EG4 yet.
EG4 has an app? That must have just come out, I wasn't aware. This is purchased from solar assistant website you can google it to find it.
@@MicahGallant it's most likely the MPP Solar software, WatchPower
@@Dr.PhDeez the EG4 3000EHV comes with a wifi dongle and you use the "SmartESS" app on your phone to access the data. Getting it setup and working was a bit challenging, but I was able to get it working before switching to Solar Assistant. I must say that Solar Assistant is much nicer, though. I do not believe you can do both at the same time, as they both need a connection to the RS232 port on the inverter. Maybe it's possible, but Solar Assistant gives everything that SmartESS does plus a lot more, so I'm not pursuing doing both.
Also, it’s been a year… update? 😁😁
Great idea, i do have more things to say about it.
😁