Selectronic comms protocol

[frackers]

Well I dunno - word must be getting round that I've 'done' a bit of RE so a mate who has just completed an off-grid house is looking to improve the overall experience!!

He has a Selectronic SP Pro (Aussie made) 5kw 48v inverter and he'd like a simple panel in the house reporting a few basic things - State of Charge,  power in/out, expected duration at current load. Something that just sits on the wall and tells him these basic things like a barometer does.

The inverter has a 9 pin serial port as well as USB for configuring it using the proprietary SP Link protocol to a Windows only application. If I can get a few basic bits of information from the box via this serial port, I can display it on a character display using an Arduino. Trouble is, without setting up a Windows box, protocol analyser and such in his power shed its going to be a bit tricky so code up the Arduino unless someone has already done it

Anyone any info?

[rossw]

Anyone any info?

I'm in the same boat.
When I bought mine a year or two back, Selectronics said they would have (hinted at 4-6 months) a web-based interface board, but AFAIK it still hasn't been released.

I too would love to get the basics from it in "easy to use" form. They refused point blank to divulge any details to me.
I could, if you like, provide you access to a windoze box running on my inverter - as long as you don't change anything on the inverter, obviously!

Gimme a whistle in PM if you want me to set it up.

[frackers]

I take it you use the USB connection into the inverter - I'd be interested to know if that it just a USB to serial converter (something like a PL2303 or a FTDI FT245) which will show up under Device Manager as a serial port among any other USB devices.

If it is as I suspect then I'll try my mates system with a serial connection to his laptop and run up SP-Link and assuming it communicates the same way, I'll put one of my logic analysers on it to trace the conversation for a few minutes while I connect/disconnect, get status updates etc. Shouldn't be hard to sort out

Don't want to dash of and try it immediately as he is a good 40mins drive away!!