Hope you get it sorted - I’d be interested to know what the outcome is.
Bob.
Hi Bob
Still not got this problem licked! However today I used my S7e 'phone to ping “pvoutput.org” using the 4G connection and it works. When I turned on the wifi (ie using the BT Fibre route the ping test failed.
This does rather point to BT not resolving the web address. Previously they denied that could happen so I will get onto them again. I wonder if anyone else has had this problem with smaspot on the Pi when using BT for broadband.
BTW I have not had any useful response yet from the Pi forum.
If you know how to make my problem more visible on the pvoutput forum then I would be grateful.
Regards, Martin
Sorry I’ve been away so have only just got around to reading this. It does seem like hard work, BT are a popular ISP so you’d think there would be help available. The fact that you’re having problems with multiple devices on your network does suggest that it’s a BT problem - is it the same from your computer (assuming that you have one)?
The only other thing I could suggest is to to factory reset your router to see if that solves it. You could also try deleting and recreating the wi-fi connection on the Pi although as it’s also happening on your phone I’m not confident that this would work.
Good luck 
Bob.
Nice to hear from you Bob. I solved the problem only yesterday with some on line help from the Raspi Forum. Dead simple of course. There is file in the Pi “/etc/resolve.conf” . In Putty all you have to do is type this command once logged in to Pi: sudo nano /etc/resolve.conf. One line of text in there “nameserver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4” No inverted commas so typically it would look like this:
nameserver 192.168.1.254 8.8.8 8 8.8.4.4 (note the spaces between the ip addresses) The 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4 are alternative dns servers (google). I now you don’t need this but It is for the benefit of the others who may be stuck. I must have put my original router’s ip address in this file because it was there but it was a while back when I confugured the Pi!! So it was a dns problem, nothing to do with the bb service provider, in my case BT. BTW my Pi is connected with good old ethernet cable! Again many thanks for your interest in my problem.
That’s great news. Assuming that you are fc_solar2011 I can see that you are back on-line although there seem to be a few gaps in your data. I’ve always found SBFspot to be good at catching up when I’ve been off line but never for as long as you.
Bob.
Yes I am fc_solar2011! Back on line properly today now. I have filled in the missing days manually but the data does not update the daily live production graph.
At least the sun is shining today!
I know I’m pretty late here, but I just got a RPi for some test projects, I have a solar array, so I said “what the heck”, let’s try connecting those two and getting some sweet stats. The things is, everything (or so I see it) goes through pvoutput.org. Well, what if the site shuts down or something? I personally don’t mind sending my data here, sharring and comparing it with the rest of the world (though I can see how others would), but what I expect is reliability. The idea that, whatever happens to this site, or the internet for that matter, my RPi as long as it receives electricity and is connected to the inverter, it will record, and store everything.
So my question is, is there a script for offline storage and monitoring, or do those other scripts I see here already provide that?
Thanks.
I’ve been using PVOutput for about 18 months and during that time it’s been very reliable, I can’t speak for backup and recovery and what the long term viability of the site is though.
I use SBFspot and this stores data in a local database on the Pi. You could back that up to some cloud storage but you’d need something else to query and present the data. I’ve not investigated this so can’t say if such a thing already exists.
Bob.
1 Like
Thing is, for offline storage you need a disk, and heck, cloud storage is pretty much still free for RPi.
I connected my deaf, dumb and blind Kaco 3502xi to the internet with a microcontroller coincidentally named Photon.
It uploads data to a Google Sheet and PVO. I don’t expect to, but I could easily move data from Google to some other site if I needed to, and that data is as private as I want it to be. By the way, you can choose not to share data on PVO, that’s an option in your settings.
Hi,
Just got SBFspot working on RPI, but have discovered that the SMA 20000TL presents itself as two separate BT devices with different SNs of 10KW each.
Can you share how you managed to get more than one set of SBFspot data out to PVOutput? The SBFspot manual only really covers a single inverter setup.
I’ve tried adding the second BT address in the SBFSpot.cfg, but after that, the SMAData CSV only contains the data from the first BT device listed. You can see the SN change partway down the file:
I also changed the MIS_enabled to 1, but this didn’t seem to do anything.
I had added the second inverter ID in the SBFspotUpload.cfg, but I suspect that this is only going to do something if the first stage of data collection is working correctly.
It looks like the SQL DB might have both of them:
FWIW, the developer gave the following instruc tions which worked:
create 2 config files. Each config has its proper BT address and plantname.
Call SBFspot twice with each config:
SBFspot -v -cfg2110564778.cfg
SBFspot -v -cfg2110563802.cfg
For the daemon config, enter the 2 serial numbers with PVoutput System ID’s
`PVoutput_SID=2110564778:,2110563802:
I just installed a SMA SB5.0-1SP-US-40 and would like to upload to my PVoutput account.
I’m a bit confused. This inverter does not have bluetooth. It has Ethernet and WiFi. I’m connected via Ethernet.
I’ll run this on a Raspberry Pi which doesn’t have Bluetooth either. It will have LAN access to the inverter.
I don’t understand why Bluetooth? Do I need Bluetooth?
You need bluetooth to be able to compile sbfspot.
I understand the requirement of bluetooth to compile but what about this:
Following configuration options have to be modified – The others can keep their default values.
BTAddress : Bluetooth address of device closest to Raspberry Pi (Use hcitool scan to find it)
If you have more than one inverter, each inverter should have the same NetID > 1 and Config option MIS_Enabled=1
Make sure to disable IP_Address with # in front.
There are no BT devices, should I just ignore this section?
Yes, disable btaddress with # in front.
Use ip_address instead
Thanks for all your help.
It looks like it’s working!
I’ve installed this on Windows. It appears to have uploaded data once initially only. The service is running OK. How do I configure it to obtain data and upload it at regular intervals?
Has this changed in between? Can we go via this German site to PVOutput so that no software on a local PC is needed? Or can the script not be put on a PVOutput server??