Stores solar data in a database to view on Android, Grafana, or PVOutput

Supported Products • Documentation • Features • Supported Databases • Examples

Supported Products

• Outback MATEs (FX Inverter, MX/FM Charge Controller)
• Renogy Rover (And other Renogy products) over modbus serial.
  • Includes Rover, Rover Elite, Wanderer, Adventurer, Dual Input DCDC Charger, Rover Boost and possibly others
  • Compatible with all SRNE Solar Charge Controllers (And rebranded products)
  • Compatible with Zenith Grape Solar Charge Controller, PowMr MPPT Charge Controller, RICH SOLAR MPPT, WindyNations TrakMax MPPT
• EPEver Tracer
  • Includes the AN series and the TRIRON N series
  • Possibly includes the BN series (untested)
• DS18B20 Temperature Sensors and PZEM-003 and PZEM-017 Shunts

Quickstart

Ready to install? Use the Quickstart!

Features

• Supports multiple types of solar products.
• Runs reliably 24-7. Recovers from connection errors and has verbose logging features.
• Fully customizable through JSON (No programming experience required).
• Supports CouchDB, InfluxDB, local JSON file, and PVOutput exporting.
  • Multiple databases can even be used at the same time!
  • Packets are uploaded in parallel to multiple databases at the same time
• Can report Raspberry Pi CPU temperature.
• Easy setup on Linux. Runs without root.

Supported Databases

• CouchDB
  • Allows for SolarThing Android and SolarThing Web to function
  • Used for PVOutput data collection
• GraphQL
  • Allows use of CouchDB SolarThing data with Grafana
  • Supplements the CouchDB database
• InfluxDB
  • Simplest to set up with Grafana
• PVOutput.org
  • Allows for viewing of data on pvoutput.org
  • Requires CouchDB to be set up
  • Enables usage of the PVOutput Mycroft skill
• REST API
  • With the "post" database, all packets can be posted to a URL endpoint, useful for REST APIs

Examples

PVOutput Wild Mountain Farms: PVOutput System and PVOutput SolarThing Teams

SolarThing Android: Github | Google Play

SolarThing Android displays data in a persistent notification that updates at a configurable rate

You can get data in Grafana via InfluxDB or via CouchDB+SolarThing GraphQL.

Snapshot of Wild Mountain Farms Dashboard

Grafana is very customizable. Rearrange graphs and make it how you want!

Usage at Wild Mountain Farms

We monitor an Outback MATE2, Renogy Rover PG 40A, EPEver Tracer2210AN (20A) using a Raspberry Pi 3. Each device has its own instance of SolarThing running. Each instance uploads data to CouchDB. CouchDB, Grafana, and SolarThing GraphQL run on a separate "NAS" computer. This NAS runs the automation and pvoutput programs. The automation program handles the sending of Slack messages for low battery notifications.

Database Setup

• CouchDB setup
  
  • Used for SolarThing Android, SolarThing Web, and SolarThing GraphQL (which gets data to Grafana)
• InfluxDB 2.0 setup
  
  • Used for direct Grafana queries

Developer Use

Contributing

Technical

Project Structure

History

Google Analytics

Updating

Configuration

This uses all JSON for configuring everything. The files you edit are all in one place unless you decide to move them.

See configuration to see how to set them up

Renogy Rover Monitoring Alternatives

Don't like something about SolarThing? Here are some alternatives to monitor your Renogy Rover.

• https://github.com/corbinbs/solarshed
• https://github.com/logreposit/renogy-rover-reader-service
• https://github.com/menloparkinnovation/renogy-rover
• https://github.com/floreno/renogy-rover-modbus
• https://github.com/CyberRad/CoopSolar
• https://github.com/amigadad/SolarDataCollection

Suggestions?

If you have suggestions on how to improve the documentation or have a feature request, I'd love to hear from you! SolarThing Issues

If you get confused while trying to configure solarthing, that's probably because the documentation is always a work in progress. If you find something confusing, please report it, so I can make it clearer.