Homebridge-Solax Platform Plugin
Use this plugin to monitor your Solax Inverter. It can provide realtime metrics from your inverter along with configurable alerts for Automation purposes.
Note: HomeKit doesn't natively support a solar inverter or a watts based acccessory. To work around this limitation, a light sensor accessory is used the display the various metrics. Noting the minimum allowed value for a light sensor is 0.1.
Requires the installation of the Solax Monitoring Dongle, and usage of a static IP address on your LAN. Refer to your Router configuration guide on how to do this.
Once you know the IP address of your Solax Inverter, navigate to http://{InverterIpAddress}/api/realTimeData.htm Here you should get a (malformed) JSON payload, but this will confirm it's possible to extract metrics from it.
Installation
Install Plugin
npm install homebridge-solax
Configure
"platforms": [
{
"platform" : "SolaxHomebridgePlugin",
"name" : "Solax Inverter",
"address": "http://192.168.1.40",
"pollingFrequencySeconds": 60,
"movingAverageHistoryLength": 10,
"exportAlertThresholds": [-5000, 0, 1000, 1500],
"showStrings": true,
"hasBattery": false,
"valueStrategy": "SimpleMovingAverage"
}
]
address: The base hostname of your inverter connection dongle
pollingFrequencySeconds: Optional: Specifies how often to poll the Solax Inverter, and issue updates to HomeKit. Defaults to 60 seconds.
movingAverageHistoryLength: Optional: Specifies the number of samples to keep when using Averaging over time based value strategies. Defaults to 10 entries. See valueStrategy field for details on how this is used.
exportAlertThresholds: Optional: Array of integers specifying the thresholds to create Alerts for. This will activate a motion trigger when the power export matches or exceeds the threshold value. Example: [-1000, 500, 2000] will create three motion sensors - "1000 watts imported", "500 watts exported" and "2000 watts exported".
showStrings: Optional: Defaults to true. Shows Individual Inverter String metrics (PV1, PV2).
hasBattery: Optional: Defaults to true. Experimental. Shows Battery information. Note, due to limited documentaiton from Solax, the Charging State is estimated based on the delta of Battery Watts.
valueStrategy: Optional: Defaults to SimpleMovingAverage. LatestReading = use the latest values at each polling period, SimpleMovingAverage for providing some smoothing of values, to handle scenarios like sporadic cloud/sun moments. Averages over the entire history. ExpoentialMovingAverage = Use standard Exponential Moving Average calculation to provide a smoothed last value. Refer to movingAverageHistoryLength for Moving Average based history tuning.
exposeRawMetrics: Optional: Defaults to true. 3 additional accessories will be exposed to provide the raw value feed (no averaging based filtering).
Leveraging in Automations via Motion Sensor Accessories
You can then create Automations in HomeKit as a result of the motion detection events (or them ceasing to happen).
Example: If 2000 watts or more is being exported, and heatpump isn't already cranked, then bump the temperature up.
I personally use Home+, as it allows for smarter controlling of devices. E.g. See below
