Solarstats

A very simple engine for collecting statistics from a solar charge controller.

Solarlstats works by polling probes for stats and persisting them with writers. Probes and Writers are generic objects that can be extended to integrate with different data sources and backends. A running instance of solarstats can be configured with multiple probes and multiple writers.

The probes and writers are configured via a simple YAML config file.

e.g.

frequency: 5.0
logging:
  level: INFO
  filename: solarstats.log
probes:
  RenogyRover:
    device: /dev/ttyUSB0
    address: 1
writers:
  Http:
    port: 5555
  Sql:
    connection: sqlite:///solarstats.sqlite

The main (only?) probe availabe in this implementation is for communicating with Renogy charge controllers via the RS232 port. The implementation of the Renogy probe is heavily based on https://github.com/corbinbs/solarshed. This repo builds on this by adding tests and improving ergonomics.

Running solarstats

Tested with python 3.11 but probably works with earlier versions.

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m solarstats

The output will look something like this:

2023-10-04 22:21:44 - __main__ - INFO | Loaded configuration from: /Users/seb/Documents/Dev/solarstats/config/config.yaml
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - engine - INFO | ================================================================================
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - engine - INFO | Starting probes. Press CTRL-C to terminate
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - engine - INFO | Polling with probe RenogyRoverSimulator
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - probes.renogy - INFO | Polling controller RenogyRoverControllerSimulator
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - engine - INFO | Writing to Http
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - writers.http - INFO | Starting http server at: http://localhost:5555
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - engine - INFO | Writing to Sql
2023-10-04 22:21:44 - writers.sql - INFO | Writing metrics for provider RenogyRoverSimulator@0.1
2023-10-04 22:21:49 - engine - INFO | Polling with probe RenogyRoverSimulator
2023-10-04 22:21:49 - probes.renogy - INFO | Polling controller RenogyRoverControllerSimulator
2023-10-04 22:21:49 - engine - INFO | Writing to Http
2023-10-04 22:21:49 - engine - INFO | Writing to Sql
2023-10-04 22:21:49 - writers.sql - INFO | Writing metrics for provider RenogyRoverSimulator@0.1
^C2023-10-04 22:21:50 - __main__ - INFO | Done

Simulator

You might have noticed that the logs above mention the RenogyRoverSimulator controller. This is a handy stand in for the real Renogy probe for testing solarstats when not connected to a real solar controller.

The simulator works by taking a SQL database as a source of metrics and simply replays them at a given interval. The configuration for the example above looks like this:

frequency: 5.0
logging:
  level: INFO
  filename: solarstats.log
probes:
  # RenogyRover:
  #   device: /dev/ttyUSB0
  #   address: 1
  RenogyRoverSimulator:
    connection: sqlite:///solarstats.simulated.sqlite  # source of fake metrics
writers:
  Http:
    port: 5555
  Sql:
    connection: sqlite:///solarstats.sqlite

You can use the Sql writer when connected with the real RenogyRover probe to generate your own database of metrics that can be used directly with the simulator.