Bluetooth Connection of the Sunny Boy Inverter on Ubuntu

My photovoltaic panels are connected to the power grid through a Sunny Boy SB5000TL inverter. Although, this inverter comes out-of-the-box with bluetooth connectivity, this feature is only supported on Windows. Luckily, there exists a free tool that reads out the generation data on Linux: sma-bluetooth. This involves a few manual commands detailed in http://code.google.com/p/sma-bluetooth/wiki/ubuntu_compile_guide. The guide didn't work a 100% for me, so the next section details the steps I followed.

The code can be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/sma-bluetooth.

In the terminal ( Ctl + Alt + T):

• sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client mysql-query-browser libmysqlclient-dev (the libmysqlclient-dev package is needed for compilation)
• sudo apt-get install bluez libbluetooth-dev curl libcurl3 libcurl4-nss-dev
• create a new Makefile in the sma-bluetooth-0.17 directory:

  gedit Makefile 
  

  Contents (make sure you use a tab, not spaces, in front of the gcc commands):

  smatool: smatool.o 
   
          gcc smatool.o -L/usr/lib -lmysqlclient -lbluetooth -lcurl -lm -o smatool  
   
  smatool.o: smatool.c 
   
          gcc -c smatool.c 
   
  

• make

Now prepare the Bluetooth connection:

• my bluetooth USB dongle is automatically up & read on ubuntu 11.10:

  $ lsusb | grep -i bluetooth 
  Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth) 
  

• hcitool scan
• workaround if hcitool scan gives no result: (seehttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup#Setup_Devices for details)

  sudo hciconfig hci0 inqmode 0 
  

• cp smatool.conf.new smatool.conf
• gedit smatool.conf
  • modify the lines as explained in the comments
  • you can optionally upload your data to the excellent pvoutput.org service - see http://pvoutput.org/account.jsp for details:
    • get the API key
    • configure your unique SID
  • use the bluetooth password for 'normal' usage (by default 0000 in some devices). I had trouble with the different password reserved for maintenance.

If you use mysql:

• install the database / create the tables (this requires a user with admin rights):

  ./smatool --INSTALL 
  

• an empty password is not supported

Running:

• ./smatool
• debug & verbose can help identifying errors:

  ./smatool -d -v 
  

• ./smatool -? lists out all options available

My pv-output: http://pvoutput.org/list.jsp?userid=9300

Next steps:

• schedule the smatool in cron
• replace mysql with sqlite for easier is
• deploy the config on a plug computer