Sofar2MQTT Help

jasgrif11

All,

I setup the Sofar2MQTT hardware, and when I look at the MQTT plugin in HA and listen to all #, I see the following (indicating that the hardware is successfully connected to the MQTT broker).

Message 1 received on Sofar2MQTT/state at 7:56 PM:{
    "uptime": 9319996,
    "deviceName": "Sofar2MQTT",
    "running_state": 2,
    "inverter_temp": 48,
    "inverter_HStemp": 36,
    "grid_freq": 49.98,
    "inverter_power": 740,
    "grid_power": 30,
    "grid_voltage": 237.7,
    "consumption": 750,
    "solarPV1Volt": 225.8,
    "solarPV1Current": 0.13,
    "solarPV1": 0,
    "solarPV2Volt": 220.2,
    "solarPV2Current": 0.1,
    "solarPV2": 10,
    "solarPV": 0,
    "battery_voltage": 52.7,
    "battery_current": -14.2,
    "battery_power": -720,
    "battery_temp": 24,
    "batterySOC": 96,
    "batterySOH": 100,
    "battery_cycles": 65394,
    "today_generation": 19.78,
    "total_generation": 3791.2,
    "today_consumption": 15.46,
    "total_consumption": 5333.3,
    "today_purchase": 1.03,
    "total_purchase": 3187.1,
    "today_exported": 14.05,
    "total_exported": 2893.8,
    "today_charged": 16.99,
    "total_charged": 1459.2,
    "today_discharged": 11.2,
    "total_discharged": 1333.1,
    "working_mode": 0
}

My issue is I don't know how to create sensors in Ha and connect this MQTT feed into that.

I looked at https://gitlab.com/rjpearce/sofar2mqtt repo, and while the instructions are very detailed, I don't have the PI in the middle as my hardware is leveraging the ESP32 setup.

I'm missing a piece between getting the hardware setup and sensors created in HA. How do I get the sensors connected to the correct topic?

Jonathan

If it doesn't support autodiscovery (and it sounds like it doesn't), you'll need to create the sensors manually using yaml.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/sensor.mqtt/

jasgrif11

I changed the device's name to "sofar", and I see 48 entities showing up in HA as I included the YAML configurations from https://gitlab.com/rjpearce/sofar2mqtt. in my config file on HA.

However all the sensors have a value of Unknown. I think its a minor issue, but stumped!

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121061444#Comment_121061444

Check Developer Tools for some of those entities and see if what "last changed" is listed.

10-10-20

Actually, the sensor names in HA are being taken from the file "automations/mqtt-sofar-hyd-ep.yaml".

https://gitlab.com/rjpearce/sofar2mqtt/-/blob/main/ha/mqtt-sofar-hyd-ep.yaml?ref_type=heads

Try look those up in the Developer Tool.

jasgrif11

@10-10-20 I see a few entities where the state seems ok as in this example.

However, most others are reading as Unknown. All would have come from the same Yaml file

10-10-20

If the data is getting to MQTT but not into HA, then I'm not sure of the next steps as I don't use MQTT that much other than Zwave2MQTT, but that has a optional debug file.

Any chance you're using this project and it doesn't support the entities that you're looking for?

https://github.com/cmcgerty/Sofar2mqtt

Subscribe your MQTT client to:
Sofar2mqtt/state
Which provides:

running_state
 grid_voltage
 grid_current
 ...

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121067175#Comment_121067175

There's 2 variants of the sofar2mqtt! Something to watch out for.

jasgrif11

Ok I finally got this working (mainly). Yes it was the cmcgerty version that I needed to use and I set everything up as JSON. I have a few questions that I hope others with experience can provide insight on.

1. When in Self Use mode I have to set a value for charge/discharge. Is this normal behaviour?
2. I read online that I should change to "Passive" mode sparingly. "warning: this register does not support frequent writes". I believe it has to do with the amount of writes to the EEPROM of the inverter. Is this true?
3. There is however a "Passive Schedule Management mode" with the following options 0: Spontaneous self-use mode, 1: Manual mode, 2: Schedule mode. Has anyone enabled and used this? This essentially means that the inverter always runs in passive mode.

I should outline my scenario. I want to be able to manage the charging time based on certain conditions. As an example: If EV is plugged into Zappi and SOC is less than 80% and it's after 12am and before 9am then charge car until SOC is 80%. Once car reaches 80% change Zappi mode to Stop. In parallel charge battery to 100% (during same time window). If the battery is at 100% and car is still charging then disable JKBMS discharge (so car doesn't pull from the battery). At 9am set inverter to Self Use and Zappi to Eco+

That is just one scenario. I may look at different ones once I move to Smart Meter and on a different tariff.

jasgrif11

Does anyone have a full list of topic queries that I can run with the cmcgerty version?

In particular i’m trying to figure out sub topic commands for Time of Use mode.

Rules:0 : Enabled

Start Time

End Time

SOC

Charge

Effective Start Date

Effective End Date

Weekday Select

I can enable Time of Use but can’t figure out how to set parameters

Thanks