Arduino Arsing About

Right, got the nonRS485 stuff all working. Tweaked the code considerably to add  Added ESP8266mDNS to advertise on the local LAN using mDNS to make it easy to find A website that displays the most recent data on a simple page; I dropped the very complex ESP8266WebServer in favour of the WiFiServer class A reset page that resets the configuration and asks for new details.  A "noRS485" flag, set on compile, but could be configured via a webpage if required so it's less twitchy about not having RS485 connected for testing Dummy data if noRS485 is set This was all fairly hard work, largely because my C++/Arduino/ESP8266 knowledge is really pants.  I've also made another ESP8266 that subscribes to the MQTT messages and displays them on a web page - this was my alternative if I couldn't get the web server working with the original!  Now just waiting for the RS485 interface to arrive so I can get round to Dave's and start shorting out his inverter :-). IDEAS Make noR

As noted in an earlier blog entry, a friend of mine has acquired a Sofar HYD6000-ES inverter as part of a mighty 8kW PV array. He is currently using the dodgy Solarman cloud software to monitor it, using the pretty standard LSW-3 wireless stick that actually uses RS485 under the covers, and sending data to the fixed address stashed within. However, it doesn't appear to be monitoring the batteries at all, so in an effort to enable this, I've been looking at alternatives. This helpful Github site  has a great description of an RS485-attached device, based on an ESP8266. This sends regular data updates out on MQTT over the local WiFi, accessing the inverter's internal registers via ModBus. I've purchased the components, and am starting to mess with software, using the Arduino IDE configured for ESP8266 Wemos D1 mini. I have the basic Sofar2MQTT sketch running, although since I lack the RS485 adaptor at this point I don't know if that works. At least the sketch runs! I