I have a few questions to make sure that I have my plan correct, and this should all work.
We had an EVCP (Zappi Glo) fitted a few weeks back, and last week my son got his EV (Polestar 2) On the first charge, it drained the EP11 battery quickly, as the sparky didn't fit extra Henley blocks. He thought that the CT clamp would take care of things, and also said the hybrid inverter meant that it couldn't read the battery and block it. I called and explained that it did need extra Henley blocks fitting, and when he rang Zappi installer helpline, he was told the same. Issue is, we have basically no more space to fit in the outside meter cupboard.
We are on the Octopus IOG tariff, so they won't be happy if we turn off smart charging, and I was toying with setting up Home Assistant as a future project, seems the timeframe was advanced.
I should be setting this up in the next few days, once the bits arrive. I have gone with the Nabu Casa Green for now, and hopefully was correct choice, along with Waveshare USB to RS485 (B)
1. Have I ordered the wrong kit?
2. Do I clear out the manual mode scheduler in Fox Cloud 2.0, letting HA take over?
3. Due to the randomness of the OIG charging slots, I assume that I can put a little event based listener on, for I think Intelligent Dispatch command or monitor the tariff rate being issued and then tell Inverter to charge up is possible?
I basically want the battery to charge up, whenever a charging session is active or during the 23:30 to 05:30 cheap window, so that the EP11 doesn't get sucked dry by the car.
1. Yes that's a good starter setup - it'll mostly work out of the box. (you may eventually want to investigate upgrading to an SSD if you want to maintain a lot of statistics over a long time but the 32GB MMC should be good for years)
2. Yes, you can't use scheduler and home assistant at the same time - scheduler runs in the Manager (ARM) and will take precedent over anything you set over modbus. To be fair once you have a home assistant you'll never go near scheduler again.
3. Yes, there is an Octopus integration (by bottlecapdave) and that has a number of sensors you can monitor, either intelligent dispatching or the tariff going low. There is also a Myenergi integration and you can instead watch the internal.ct1 sensor which shows the current charge power and decide when you see that charge (that's more accurate as it is what you are being billed on i.e. when your EV is charging the current 30 minute slot will be low tariff).
The easiest thing to do is simply raise minSoC to 100% when you see the tariff go low - on your EP11 that will charge slowly at 5A ~ 2kWh but as well as charging it will protect the battery from discharge which is the more important.
There is also a Force Charge workmode created by the integration and you can use that to charge quicker (it comes with a 'max' charge power setting)
2. Yes, you can't use scheduler and home assistant at the same time - scheduler runs in the Manager (ARM) and will take precedent over anything you set over modbus. To be fair once you have a home assistant you'll never go near scheduler again.
3. Yes, there is an Octopus integration (by bottlecapdave) and that has a number of sensors you can monitor, either intelligent dispatching or the tariff going low. There is also a Myenergi integration and you can instead watch the internal.ct1 sensor which shows the current charge power and decide when you see that charge (that's more accurate as it is what you are being billed on i.e. when your EV is charging the current 30 minute slot will be low tariff).
The easiest thing to do is simply raise minSoC to 100% when you see the tariff go low - on your EP11 that will charge slowly at 5A ~ 2kWh but as well as charging it will protect the battery from discharge which is the more important.
There is also a Force Charge workmode created by the integration and you can use that to charge quicker (it comes with a 'max' charge power setting)
Thank you for the replies Dave, most informative!
I did spin up HAOS on my home NAS, and loaded Bottlecapdave's integration, along with Fox cloud to see Inverter. So that was good to have a little play with.
I might even use my own NAS in the future, once I get things up and running... I think that if I get some LAN to RS485, I could potentially be able to get in/out via the NAS Virtual Machine instance I was running.
For now I want to go with the simple Green device and get it up and running faster.
Interesting about the Zappi way of monitoring things, only concern I had was OIG hadn't given me a slot, but Zappi decided to charge anyway (I am new to Zappi Glo, so learning still) I did see in the HAOS that there was a Bump charge that was toggled on, not sure if the OIG had instructed this or not.
Anyhow, thanks again for the input, and hopefully it will all be spun up in a few days time.
I did spin up HAOS on my home NAS, and loaded Bottlecapdave's integration, along with Fox cloud to see Inverter. So that was good to have a little play with.
I might even use my own NAS in the future, once I get things up and running... I think that if I get some LAN to RS485, I could potentially be able to get in/out via the NAS Virtual Machine instance I was running.
For now I want to go with the simple Green device and get it up and running faster.
Interesting about the Zappi way of monitoring things, only concern I had was OIG hadn't given me a slot, but Zappi decided to charge anyway (I am new to Zappi Glo, so learning still) I did see in the HAOS that there was a Bump charge that was toggled on, not sure if the OIG had instructed this or not.
Anyhow, thanks again for the input, and hopefully it will all be spun up in a few days time.
The only thing to say about the NAS is that home assistant is losing support for ARM systems and a lot of the NAS implementations may stop working, I know a lot of people that are doing what you are doing and buying a green - they are very good value for money.
Because of the way IOG bills you, i.e. outside of the 23:30-05:30 your 30 minutes is only billed at low tariff when it confirms a charge - i've found using the Zappi charge sensor is the most reliable way to do that albeit it might take a minute before it's updated as it only polls occasionally.
I got a bit too belt and braces by adding a Shelly EM and CT clamp to my charger and that gives me instant charge power, I use that to trigger my low tariff automations as 'confirmed charging'
Either way you'll have lots of fun with this
Because of the way IOG bills you, i.e. outside of the 23:30-05:30 your 30 minutes is only billed at low tariff when it confirms a charge - i've found using the Zappi charge sensor is the most reliable way to do that albeit it might take a minute before it's updated as it only polls occasionally.
I got a bit too belt and braces by adding a Shelly EM and CT clamp to my charger and that gives me instant charge power, I use that to trigger my low tariff automations as 'confirmed charging'
Either way you'll have lots of fun with this
My main home NAS is Synolgy 920+ so runs Intel Celeron J4125 CPU, so should be fine if ARM support is dropped.
You have definitely given me food for thought regarding the Zappi way, might be more reliable or polls faster than the other way.
I am sure to have a lot of fun, the possibilities of HA are almost endless, cannot wait.
You have definitely given me food for thought regarding the Zappi way, might be more reliable or polls faster than the other way.
I am sure to have a lot of fun, the possibilities of HA are almost endless, cannot wait.
I got ModBus working, but damn did I make a wonderful mistake.
I had never seen this connector before, and didn't know how it worked, so pulled it apart.
I did manage to put this together, after I dropped every single pin out and the orange push down parts on the garage floor.
When I put the connector back together again, and wired back the CT Clamp & Modbus... I got error in the inverter as the pin (8) for the CT1+ wasn't fully in the plug... so I had to fully dismantle and put together for a 2nd time.
I had never seen this connector before, and didn't know how it worked, so pulled it apart.
When I put the connector back together again, and wired back the CT Clamp & Modbus... I got error in the inverter as the pin (8) for the CT1+ wasn't fully in the plug... so I had to fully dismantle and put together for a 2nd time.
I have been through this process and added the A/B cables to the pin 3 and 4 and measured around 2.2V across it. I use modbus RTU most days at work so I am very familiar with this protocol but I cannot get this thing to respond to a message at all. I tried Read Holding Registers, Read Input Registers, I tried 9600,n,8,1 on my master I tried 19200,n,8,1 as well. I tried swapping A/B
I am just polling directly from my PC with a USB-RS485 adapter like I do on industrial gear using Modbus poll. You cannot get any more basic than that.
I tried registers from 11000, but I am not getting anything.
On my KH the settings>communication has only one option RS485, and within that option there is only one option Address which is at 247 which seems to be default.
I tried removing the USB dongle for the wifi to see if it was interfering but I get absolutely nothing.
I am running
Version_Master：1.58
Version_Slave：1.02
Version_ARM：1.58
Suggestions please! - everyone seems to hook up just fine.
(oh btw yes I have an HF2211 RS485 to WiFi (an Elfin Big Brother) - that didn't work either which is why I took my laptop down. Yes I have tried through home assistant
I am just polling directly from my PC with a USB-RS485 adapter like I do on industrial gear using Modbus poll. You cannot get any more basic than that.
I tried registers from 11000, but I am not getting anything.
On my KH the settings>communication has only one option RS485, and within that option there is only one option Address which is at 247 which seems to be default.
I tried removing the USB dongle for the wifi to see if it was interfering but I get absolutely nothing.
I am running
Version_Master：1.58
Version_Slave：1.02
Version_ARM：1.58
Suggestions please! - everyone seems to hook up just fine.
(oh btw yes I have an HF2211 RS485 to WiFi (an Elfin Big Brother) - that didn't work either which is why I took my laptop down. Yes I have tried through home assistant
I am sorry to hear that it didn't work for you, maybe Dave or someone else has suggestions for you.
As you can see from my post, I am the numpty that fired my pins across the garage floor.
As you can see from my post, I am the numpty that fired my pins across the garage floor.
The baud rate is definitely 9600, N,8,1
Can you try doing a read registers (holding) starting from 30000 with a count of 16 which should return the model number.
you would normally expect it to work out of the box, slave id 247 is correct, the pins are straight through A goes to A, B to B on the adaptor - also your firmware versions are ok (it doesn't need the datalogger to be removed).
2.2V is in the right ball park for modbus RTU but you would expect to get something back from a poll, typically problems like this are electrical the KH i've heard is a bit more difficult (as mentioned above the finicky pins) but also because the numbering is done looking from the front of the connector - either way your should see CT1 connected to pins 7 & 8 which will give you a good reference.
Can you try doing a read registers (holding) starting from 30000 with a count of 16 which should return the model number.
you would normally expect it to work out of the box, slave id 247 is correct, the pins are straight through A goes to A, B to B on the adaptor - also your firmware versions are ok (it doesn't need the datalogger to be removed).
2.2V is in the right ball park for modbus RTU but you would expect to get something back from a poll, typically problems like this are electrical the KH i've heard is a bit more difficult (as mentioned above the finicky pins) but also because the numbering is done looking from the front of the connector - either way your should see CT1 connected to pins 7 & 8 which will give you a good reference.