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Oskar
Member
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# Posted: 30 Mar 2019 08:15am
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Hello all off-grid people!
We are a couple of people developing new innovative energy monitoring and controlling technology to make your off-grid life easier. You can monitor the energy consumption of each specific electric appliance in real time, and additionally control all the appliances through the smartphone app.
In order to develop the best possible product we are now researching what kind of actual problems people living off-grid are facing, so we would appreciate all answers we can get.
1.Do you have solar panels installed? YES/NO
2.Do you have some kind of energy storage(batteries)? YES/NO
3.Can you get a detailed breakdown of your energy consumption with your current system? YES/NO
4.How often there was unexpected energy consumed by one of your appliances(malfunction/forgotten to switch off/overused)?
5.How do you identify the biggest energy offenders of your system?
6.Would you pay for a system that monitor the energy and control all appliances and lighting using an app?
7.What kind of features would you like to see related to this topic?
Thank you for your time!
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MatthewBriggs
Member
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# Posted: 6 Apr 2019 05:07am
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Is it a hardware system or a software system that is used to control consumption?
A combination of both could help to determine energy consumption.
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Oskar
Member
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# Posted: 6 Apr 2019 08:18am
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Hello!
Yes it is a combination. Do you live off-grid?
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Ian
Member
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# Posted: 15 Jun 2019 03:03am - Edited by: Ian
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Oskar
Hi Oskar,
This is exactly what I need and I am thinking of developing it for my own use. How far in the development stage are you?
Let me know if you want to discuss things further.
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Steve_S
Member
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# Posted: 16 Jun 2019 08:22am
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1- I have Solar Panels.
2- I have a Battery Bank.
3- Can I get a detail of my usage & Generation ? YES
4- Do not have independent device monitoring. IoT devices can do so
5- By label & Monitoring Inverter Stats & Kill-A-Watt (IoT Variations are available)
6- Would I pay for such ? I programmed my own.
There is indeed a need for such Applications & Products for people who lack the ability to program their own software or for those who cannot access such software. The single biggest problem is communicating with the various devices (Solar Equipment such as controller & inverters) and the devices around your home.
IN some cases, there are a variety of IoT devices which can monitor, control (on/off) and more which can be added between the "appliance" and the outlet but a matter of simple & easy controls is an issue.
There are several Freeware / Opensource apps written and available to do just his type of thing but it is complicated as noted above.
My own software is written using OpenSource Material. It run's on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Raspian (Debian Linux) Node-Red, InfluxDB (Time Series Database) and Granafa for visualisation. This communicates with my Solar Controller (Midnite Classic 200) and my Inverter/Charger (Samlex 4024) using the MODBUS protocol via TCPIP.
If your looking to cover all solar equipment, that is not going to be easy by any means. On-Grid / Grid Attached equipment mostly complies with Sunspec Certification which simplifies some but off-grid / standalone devices do not fall into this group.
REF: https://sunspec.org/
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creeky
Member
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# Posted: 16 Jun 2019 09:19am
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All of the posts up to yours Steve are 1st posters. So a bot talking to a bot?
It is a good topic tho.
For IoT I use samsung's smarthings. Its quite cheap. Runs zigbee and zwave. wifi. so I can control a tonne of stuff. lights. door sensors. temp. water. cameras. etc.
i really should learn to program.
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