Goboatingnow
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,325
There’s no industry standards. If the system has wifi access ( and many do ) and you have fixed broadband or cellular modems. It is possible ( albeit with a bit of mucking around ) to make the phone vpn onto the internal wifi from outsideOkay, super short version, I have a property about 2000+ miles from my house, and on that property I have a converted school bus, and a shed for snow removal equipment. I am installing 400w of solar panels, and 400Ah of lithium batteries, and TBD charge controller. The batteries will operate an NVR and several cameras, and a 4g router, this will allow me to keep an eye on my property from anywhere in the world.
That said.... how the hell do you monitor the solar system itself? On the bus, I have a renogy rover charge controller w blue tooth dongle, and it works great, but they don't offer a wifi version, only a CELL dongle that costs $100+ a year. I am already paying for WIFI at this location, and I'm streaming VIDEO. A couple 1s and 0s to show how much energy I am getting, the state of charge of the batteries, and energy use is apparently too much to ask in 2022???
What gives? Is there a charge controller that has WIFI connectivity that I am not aware of?
The alternative is a system that broadcasts the data over Ethernet , wifi or Bluetooth to a gateway device that uploads this to a monitoring portal which you then query with your phone. To do this requires you to buy into a manufacturers “walled garden “
As there is no common communications standards. ( the closest thing is probably NMEA 2000 can bus common on boats , where remote monitoring is getting easier every day )
So Victron has the building blocks for example ( Cerbo GX , globallink 520 etc ) others do not have sufficient infrastructure or have no monitoring capability in the first place.