No idea what you said, but ok. lol
lol yeah was trying to be brief but can see it gets lost in translation.
The spare RPi used to run my HA, but I migrated that about a year ago (with help) to a NUC style PC running Proxmox, and HA operates inside the VM. The PC was actually cheaper than the Pi, but way more powerful and does not consume much energy.
Let me expand.
RPi was my shorthand for a Raspberry Pi computer - same type of computer as Solar Assistant (SA) runs on.
I have a spare one, an RPi 4. I used to use it to run Home Assistant but I moved Home Assistant over to run on a different computer. So now I have a spare RPi I could use to run a second instance of Solar Assistant for monitoring the batteries, like you have done.
I moved Home Assistant over to run on a micro PC, similar to this:
I mistakenly called it a NUC (which is a bare bones unit of computing) when really it's a micro PC. They don't use much power, I think mine one uses about 6 watts more than the Raspberry Pi 4 computer I was using before.
This micro PC is much more powerful (in computer terms) than the RPi4 and as my Home Assistant system grew, the RPi was struggling to keep up. I was also concerned about the RPi running from an SD card which is not the most reliable choice for a system running stuff I just want to work. I was backing it up to a Google Drive but this has practical limits.
The micro PC uses a regular solid state drive and you can also connect external storage drives via the USB ports. It is possible to run a Raspberry Pi from a solid state drive but in the end its performance was inadequate for my needs.
These micro PCs can be picked up refurbished for about the same price (or even less) than an RPi. So I did.
However this micro PC is not dedicated to just run Home Assistant in the way the Raspberry Pi has to be dedicated to Solar Assistant.
Instead it has a basic operating system which runs software called
Proxmox Virtual Environment. Proxmox is available to download and run for free. There are of course paid enterprise versions but these are not required in a basic home set up.
What Proxmox does is allow you to "divide" your computer into any number of "virtual" computers. e.g. you could have Microsoft Windows operating system running on one "virtual" PC, while Home Assistant is running on another "virtual" PC and so on. Obviously there are limitations as you need to assign a portion of your computer's hardware resources to each of these "virtual" computers. But for all intents and purposes, they act as if they are completely independent computers.
Now on my micro PC I have a Home Assistant "Virtual Machine" (VM) as well as a VM running a visual programming system called Node Red.
Home Assistant runs sooo much faster and more smoothly than when it was running on the RPi4.
One of the really nice things with Proxmox is the ability to easily take snapshots and/or full backups of each virtual machine, either independently or all together. I have an external storage drive connected and Proxmox looks after the backups automatically every night. I still also do three backups per week to a Google Drive but I may have to change that strategy as my internet upload speed is not great.
When upgrading Home Assistant to a new version, I can take a snapshot of the virtual machine with Proxmox, which just records the exact operating state of the VM at that moment, then do the upgrade to check it all works. If there is a problem with the upgrade which is not easily resolved, then I just "rollback" to the snapshot and the VM will continue operating from the moment the snapshot was taken as if nothing happened. It's a really nice feature, like having an undo button for entire system changes.
I also have a small switch out there so it can connect via ethernet for reliability.
By this I mean I have an ethernet data point out where the inverter / batteries are and I have connected that to a small switch which allows me to connect multiple devices via ethernet. The switch looks like this:
This way I can easily connect my grid-tied inverter, the Solar Assistant RPi and a second RPi if I set one up.
I also have two other Wi-Fi routers out there, one dedicated to connect with my
Iotawatt energy monitor and another which is a mesh unit designed to extend my regular home Wi-Fi signal (which is a bit of a dud and I may remove it).
Now I didn't get to this stage without help. Like many I am technically challenged when it comes to IT things (I'm far more comfortable with maths and physics) and so was fortunate to have assistance from an IT person on anther forum.
But it has opened up a range of possibilities and I have learned a fair bit. I expect to upgrade the micro PC for one with a bit more on-board storage capacity, will do a hardware swap with my IT buddy who has dozens of these thing lying around and offered one.
In many ways it is a shame Solar Assistant is confined running on a dedicated Raspberry Pi. It would be excellent if it could run on a virtual machine. It would then have all the advantages this enables (performance, reliability, automated backup, multiple instances of Solar Assistant on one box etc).
But for me it does a good job as a conduit to my inverter and the Victron shunt enabling not just monitoring but customised automations which work in with the entire home's energy systems. Adding another as a conduit to my server rack batteries would be useful.