Due to me living in a rental property and not being able to put panels on my immediate roof but still wanting to play around with solar I've had to come up with a way of monitoring my projects remotely.
I have one 2 KW setup on a mates farm, one on my neighbors shed roof and a couple more at other family members houses. The setup on my neighbours shed runs a well pump that waters all of my gardens for free so I wanted to be able to switch this on and off over the web.
I wanted to be able to use the ESP8266 module since its cheap and there's plenty of information on the web. It can also be programmed with the Arduino IDE. The NodeMcu breakout board was chosen because it simply plugs in via USB for programming and debugging. An ADS1115 16 bit ADC was chosen for the voltage and current readings. It takes accurate readings and can measure current going through a shunt in both directions.
I cobbled together a quick voltage divider and shunt to test the concept. It works very well with very little drift. I decided since I need a few and I'm a neat freak I would make a PCB to tidy everything up. It will also help to stabilize readings since there are no fly leads acting like antennas picking up radiation and there is a solid ground plane. 8 hours later and I've got what's pictured below.
There is a TP4056 module for charging an attached LIPO battery so it can be left untended without power. A linear regulator connected through a jumper so power from V1 can be used to power the device and charge the battery. ADS1115 module in blue to take 2 bi directional current and 2 voltage readings. Filtering components to remove the noise from the current shunts. A NodeMcu board to do all of the processing and WiFi connectivity.
You can see a pic below of the logged data from the thingspeak website
