Having just bought a Victron Smart Solar MPTT for an outbuilding, this was perfect timing. After watching your video, I went out and bought an esp32 board with external wifi antenna, followed your instructions and now have the data streaming into Home Assistant. Brilliant stuff! I had no idea this existed.
Great video - a few points of clarification though. ESP32 Home is still an add-on, you mentioned it's built in at 2:42 - the built-in part is the integration that you no longer need to add from HACS. Also, the method you showed to add the new device is only correct in some circumstances, such as Raspberry Pi which you seem to be using at 3:52. Other devices require Home Assistant login via https, or you have to initially setup the new device on a PC/Mac after which it is then accessible via HA. These may cause confusion if people follow your video and wonder why it's not working for them ;)
Great video as always Lars! If you don't have a specific need for 10 minute polling,, instead of the Inject / Current State nodes you use, a single Events State node that automatically triggers when the output voltage entity drops below the threshold you set in the node. There's nothing wrong with your approach, but I prefer to trigger flows only when needed if I can. 🙂
I use the exact same thing to check data with a family caravan, making sure battery is charging and solar is working as it should. Super simple to setup and works really well.
Just as a heads up for anyone doing similar things but want the cabling a bit tidier, there are various ESP32s available with PoE for power and network. They're amazing in a UniFi environment where PoE is available nearly everywhere.
Very good point. I have a bunch of M5Stack devices lying around, so used what I had. Do you know of any specific product you like? Any recommendations? And yes, I am always up for tidier cables 🤓
@@LarsKlintTech Using what‘s available is certainly always the best approach imo. I‘ve had great success with my projects using Olimex ESP32-POE and I‘ve been looking to get my hands on one from LilyGO as I‘ve used their stuff successfully but haven‘t tested that one myself yet.
That’s a 2 thumbs up from me I definitely will be using this, have a lot of blue stuff and want to setup a few remote cameras with battery power and wifi as not practical for ac, being able to monitor all that gear this way is a big bonus cheers mate👌🇦🇺
If it helps, rather than getting notified any time it goes into bulk, I just have it setup so that I get a notification at 8am if it didn't go into float the day before. I also like to have a graph of the time spent in float each day for the last few days so I can easily see any trends
@@zoef_6894 that's a good idea. I'd probably have it notify in the evening if it didn't go into float. I've been working on redoing the bulk/abs/float graph from the app using Apex graphs in HA, but haven't quite figured it out yet.
@@LarsKlintTech It's the apex graph card that I am using and I've just made a history stats sensor that tracks the time in float for the day. I don't know how you go about adding the bulk and absorption so its layered on top of one another though. There is a "stack_group" option for the card maybe that would work?
Great ideas and now I have more Ideas of this I can spent time and money to add to things I can monitor on my small farm just as did my solar fencer get charged yesterday or is the well pump on or off. more things to tinker with . after I get my Wireless link to my gate location with Unifi Bridge will be nice to add the Home assistant link to see my Victron Charger for my Solar lights alone my 800 ft drive
You don't need to spend a lot of money in this case. The ESP32 device is very cheap. Yes, you can absolutely do that, and the Unifi Bridge works really well. Just be mindful of getting a 5Ghz connection, unless you have a completely clear line of sight, in which case you can use 60Ghz.
It's probably not enough content for a whole video, but you can find it under the settings -> SSID then scroll to the bottom where you'll find "MAC Address Filter". You then enter one MAC address at the time, and choose whether the list is "block" or "allow". I have an allow list, so only the devices I have entered a MAC for can connect.
Having just bought a Victron Smart Solar MPTT for an outbuilding, this was perfect timing. After watching your video, I went out and bought an esp32 board with external wifi antenna, followed your instructions and now have the data streaming into Home Assistant. Brilliant stuff! I had no idea this existed.
That is awesome! I am so happy you got it working too. How awesome is it to have the data in HA! 🤓
Great video - a few points of clarification though. ESP32 Home is still an add-on, you mentioned it's built in at 2:42 - the built-in part is the integration that you no longer need to add from HACS.
Also, the method you showed to add the new device is only correct in some circumstances, such as Raspberry Pi which you seem to be using at 3:52. Other devices require Home Assistant login via https, or you have to initially setup the new device on a PC/Mac after which it is then accessible via HA. These may cause confusion if people follow your video and wonder why it's not working for them ;)
You are 100% correct. Good point about prefacing the approach with what installation I have. I will add it to the description ✋
Great video as always Lars! If you don't have a specific need for 10 minute polling,, instead of the Inject / Current State nodes you use, a single Events State node that automatically triggers when the output voltage entity drops below the threshold you set in the node. There's nothing wrong with your approach, but I prefer to trigger flows only when needed if I can. 🙂
Very good point, and that is maybe a better approach in this case. I think I have got used to the polling nodes, so thanks for the nudge 😊
I use the exact same thing to check data with a family caravan, making sure battery is charging and solar is working as it should. Super simple to setup and works really well.
That is exactly it! It is so simple to use and gives so much info to manage it properly.
Just as a heads up for anyone doing similar things but want the cabling a bit tidier, there are various ESP32s available with PoE for power and network. They're amazing in a UniFi environment where PoE is available nearly everywhere.
Very good point. I have a bunch of M5Stack devices lying around, so used what I had. Do you know of any specific product you like? Any recommendations?
And yes, I am always up for tidier cables 🤓
@@LarsKlintTech Using what‘s available is certainly always the best approach imo.
I‘ve had great success with my projects using Olimex ESP32-POE and I‘ve been looking to get my hands on one from LilyGO as I‘ve used their stuff successfully but haven‘t tested that one myself yet.
M5 Stack do one that’s been perfect for me, SKU: U138
That’s a 2 thumbs up from me I definitely will be using this, have a lot of blue stuff and want to setup a few remote cameras with battery power and wifi as not practical for ac, being able to monitor all that gear this way is a big bonus cheers mate👌🇦🇺
Thanks for the support, I appreciate it. It sounds like you could really benefit from the Bluetooth proxies as well in HA.
@ I’m about to check that vid out aswell 🤙
@@alanblyde8502 🤘
BLE is the way to go. Go Home Assistant!
Absolutely!! I use BLE a lot!
If it helps, rather than getting notified any time it goes into bulk, I just have it setup so that I get a notification at 8am if it didn't go into float the day before. I also like to have a graph of the time spent in float each day for the last few days so I can easily see any trends
@@zoef_6894 that's a good idea. I'd probably have it notify in the evening if it didn't go into float.
I've been working on redoing the bulk/abs/float graph from the app using Apex graphs in HA, but haven't quite figured it out yet.
@@LarsKlintTech It's the apex graph card that I am using and I've just made a history stats sensor that tracks the time in float for the day. I don't know how you go about adding the bulk and absorption so its layered on top of one another though. There is a "stack_group" option for the card maybe that would work?
@@zoef_6894 Yeah, I'm playing with that too, but it is tricky. I either get too much data or nothing. Obviously my skills are up to it yet 😂
Great ideas and now I have more Ideas of this I can spent time and money to add to things I can monitor on my small farm just as did my solar fencer get charged yesterday or is the well pump on or off. more things to tinker with . after I get my Wireless link to my gate location with Unifi Bridge will be nice to add the Home assistant link to see my Victron Charger for my Solar lights alone my 800 ft drive
You don't need to spend a lot of money in this case. The ESP32 device is very cheap.
Yes, you can absolutely do that, and the Unifi Bridge works really well. Just be mindful of getting a 5Ghz connection, unless you have a completely clear line of sight, in which case you can use 60Ghz.
Hi, can you show us please, how to use the MAC-Address filter in UniFi?
It's probably not enough content for a whole video, but you can find it under the settings -> SSID then scroll to the bottom where you'll find "MAC Address Filter". You then enter one MAC address at the time, and choose whether the list is "block" or "allow". I have an allow list, so only the devices I have entered a MAC for can connect.
@ Okay, I have seen it connected with a Radius Server. But you make it manually in the WiFi Settings?
@@janaltenburg Yes, cause it is a short list of known devices, so I don't mind. I haven't used a Radius server, so that would be new for me.
@@LarsKlintTech Okay, Thank you very much