Hi,

I am programming a (non-commercial) application that reads data from my solar systems (one photothermic, one photovoltaic).

It's trivial to access the data from the photothermal system as the manufacturers sent me the specifications of the communication protocol. Very nice of them! (Technische Alternative, Austria).

But how can I get at the data of the Fronius inverter (IG40 in my case)? The protocol is nontrivial, AFAIK. Or do you see any way to get to the data without the communication? (I could access historical data by querying the database, but I cannot get the actual data, which I would like to graph...)

Thanks,

Christian

See www.invest-tools.com/pub/solar/20050707.png etc. for an example what my app produces...

I am interested in doing something similar. I have a Fronius IG 3000 that I would like to monitor. I don't mind buying the COM card ($120-$150), but the price they want for the data recorder seems a bit high (almost $800). The COM card is supposedly RS485 and I'm interested in tapping into that directly and having a PC running full time recording that data (and presenting it using SNMP - I work at a SNMP network management company). Is that the protocol that you received? Would it be possible for you to post it here?

Thanks in advance.
--
Sean

Thanks for your inquiries! We use a proprietary protcol between the COM cards, datalogger and PC, but will offer other alternatives at the beginning of 2006. Please keep posted. To join our e-Bulletin where we give regular updates on new products and service such as this, please send a request to pv-us@fronius.com. Thanks for your interest in Fronius!!

Brian

@buckaroo50

Well I have the data logger card, and all I get is a protocol that I did not find understandable at all.

So without Fronius' help, I don't think there's a way to access the data.

Even with data logger, you can only get at data that you actively download into Fronius' application (the data is then stored in a Jet Engine database), but not at the current data.

Sigh.

Christian

So now this is next year, and YES, there's an interface SDK available.

I was happy, until...

a) I saw that the SDK just consists of example source code, which

a1) is poorly written

a2) even more: it does not document all commands - just a very few basic ones. No access to stored data, error codes, ...

"This programme has been created to support potential developers, who intend to design an own counterpart for subsequent processing of the PV system data". Well, then please do it thoroughly!

This is really minimalistic and less than half-hearted, and will most likely not help very much, as important parts are missing! Apart from that, the source code is written in C# (and using Framework 2.0), which is only usable for applications that are written new, and the code itself - may I repeat myself - is unreadable and unnecessary complicated, and looks like simple Basic code re-written in C# by some student.

Well that does - in my eyes - reflect badly on the Firm! Fronius seems to need to try to offer what other inverter producers already offer, yet it seems to be a helpless try. It just cannot work that way. I pity firms that have to try to catch up with others, and fail because it's done the wrong way. It does not help to offer something that looks as if it could help, if it does not fulfill the expectations (and promises).

b) And then I found out I really need a new interface card. Hey, what's this? IG.Access already gets the data from my COM card that I paid for less than 12 months ago, why not just document the protocol? I can do what IG.Access can, with some documentation!

Looking at the data exchange of IG.Access and the COM card, I can see that the protocol is not easy to understand, and it seems to be lacking of a correct bus serialization (data from different sources can mix if sent at the same time) - but then, properly documented this should not pose any problem and be much cheaper (even for Fronius) than the development of a new interface card, and annoying customers with now "outdated" hardware, that cannot read the data from the inverter!

Christian

BTW: I joined the bulletin, and never got any information (unless it was sorted out by the SPAM filter...)

Christian

Three's a charm

Well bfarhi,

you say "We use a proprietary protcol between the COM cards, datalogger and PC, but will offer other alternatives at the beginning of 2006." The new protocol is still proprietary

OK; let's make an offer:

I get the documentation of the old protocol, and I do write

a) a DLL with some API that allows client applications to get the data they need (historical data, current data, states, .... whatever is offered and documented).

b) an example application that displays graphs of the most important values, and notifies the user in case of an error state.

This way, I would get the data I want, and do something for your firm (you can offer the source code of these modules). I have more than 20 years experience in Software development, I can promise much better code than the current SDK

How about that?

Christian

Update: I found the documentation (in the manual of the new interface card - never expected it there), but

- the card does not provide access to stored (historical) data

- the card does not provide access to state messages (error states...)

In my eyes, every $/€ spent for that card is lost unless just the "current" data is needed.

I don't get it. Is that really all the customers want and need? For me, it's a "NO" and I'll try to decode the old protocol.

Christian