SBFspot does not work with my inverter

Hi,

I want to use SBFspot with a bluetooth dongle LogiLink BT-0015 (which was recommended by a website
because it’s automatically recognized by Raspberry Pi). My Raspberry Pi is a very old one : Raspberry Pi Model B 512 MB RAM.

My inverter is a SMA SunnyBoy 5000 from 2008. I have never changed anything in terms of firmware on that inverter since it was installed. On Windows, I use the PC Software which was available that time in 2008 (I think it is named sunny explorer) to grab the day value of energy production late in the evening when the system is aleady switched off. I have created some strange DIY automation which starts an old PC from the bios automatically every night. This mechanism works fine for more almost 14 years now. But it lacks the “realtime” functionality - so it only creates a sum for a day.

When browsing the internet I found that there is also a method now by using a raspberry PI and a bluetooth dongle together with a software SBDspot. Because of the fact that I have a raspberry pi
already running in my electrical control cabinet I ordered such a USB Bluetooth dongle and tried it.

But I resulted in:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo /usr/local/bin/sbfspot.3/SBFspot -finq -nosql -nocsv -d5
SBFspot V3.9.2
Yet another tool to read power production of SMA solar inverters
© 2012-2021, SBF (https://github.com/SBFspot/SBFspot)
Compiled for Linux (LE) 32 bit with SQLite support
Commandline Args: -finq -nosql -nocsv -d5
getPacket(2)
MAX_CommBuf is now 18 bytes
Received 18 bytes
Received 9 bytes
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 1B 00 65 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 03
00000020: 70 00 01 01 00 00 00
cmd=2
<<<====== Content of pcktBuf =======>>>
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 1B 00 65 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 03
00000020: 70 00 01 01 00 00 00
<<<=================================>>>
MAX_pcktBuf is now 27 bytes
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 1F 00 61 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000010: 26 58 08 25 80 00 02 00 00 04
00000020: 70 00 01 00 00 00 00 01 00 00
00000030: 00
31 Bytes sent
getPacket(5)
Received 18 bytes
Received 13 bytes
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 1F 00 61 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 26 58
00000020: 08 25 80 00 01 05 71 DA 7D 1A
00000030: 00
cmd=10
Received 18 bytes
Received 16 bytes
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 22 00 5C 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00 26 58
00000020: 08 25 80 00 01 01 05 71 DA 7D
00000030: 1A 00 02 01
cmd=5
<<<====== Content of pcktBuf =======>>>
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 22 00 5C 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00 26 58
00000020: 08 25 80 00 01 01 05 71 DA 7D
00000030: 1A 00 02 01
<<<=================================>>>
MAX_pcktBuf is now 34 bytes
Local BT address: 00:1A:7D:DA:71:05
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 40 00 3E 05 71 DA 7D 1A 00
00000010: FF FF FF FF FF FF 01 00 7E FF
00000020: 03 60 65 09 A0 FF FF FF FF FF
00000030: FF 00 00 7D 5D 00 7D 5E 1A B2
00000040: 3A 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 80 00
00000050: 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000060: 00 2F 7C 7E
64 Bytes sent
getPacket(1)
Received 18 bytes
Received 5 bytes
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E 17 00 69 26 58 08 25 80 00
00000010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 7E FF
00000020: 03 60 65
cmd=1
PacketLength=23
<<<====== Content of pcktBuf =======>>>
--------: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
00000000: 7E FF 03 60 65
<<<=================================>>>
Invalid chk 0xFF00 - Found 0x6003
Sun Feb 20 23:11:54 2022: CRITICAL: Failed to initialize communication with inverter.

I have found other users having similar problems but not a description of the root cause or a solution that I can also use. For me, this looks like an unexpected answer from the inverter ! May it be, that the software levels of my (old) inverter and what SBFspot expects do not match ?
Does anybody have an idea ?

kind regards
ThommyTheKid

Try changing the MIS_enabled setting in the config file

Hi,
I tried but with exactly the same result.

If there is someone out there who has it working, maybe you can post
your debug output for such a command to compare.

kind regards
ThommyTheKid

Since you have also an issue with sunnyexplorer i propose to reset the inverter (switch it off and back on)

I think there is a misunderstanding. My old PC from 2008 works fine with a bluetooth stick and sunny explorer (also from 2008) and determines the every day sum of solar production every evening at 11 PM. This works stable and fine since 2008 !

In parallel I started with the idea of querying the production from the raspberry PI with a USB bluetooth stick. The raspberry Pi is already running 24h for other purposes, so after I make it work once I will create some stuff to get the values every 5 minutes and push them to my visualisation.

But the first step is to get the communication with the inverter working.

kind regards
ThommyTheKid

Ok, got it :wink:
Sunnyexplorer is not running when you start sbfspot? The two don´t work well together.

No - sunny explorer only runs once a day in the evening at 11 PM.
I was trying to contact the inverter in my tests with Raspberry PI during the day.

If anyone has SBFsport running with a SMA SunnyBoy 5000: could you probably
send a debug outout of the communication of the command I trigger to compare ?

kind regards
ThommyTheKid