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
- 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.
- install the database / create the tables (this requires a user with admin rights):
./smatool --INSTALL
- an empty password is not supported
./smatool
- debug & verbose can help identifying errors:
./smatool -d -v
./smatool -?
lists out all options available
Next steps:
- schedule the smatool in cron
- replace mysql with sqlite for easier is
- deploy the config on a plug computer
What Bluetooth version did you use?
ReplyDeleteBluetooth 2.0?
Yet another tool to read power production of SMA solar inverters
ReplyDeletehttps://code.google.com/p/sma-spot/