Planning on getting an EV eventually but haven’t explored V2H. Could possibly use it as a second level backup or use it as the reserve and use my house batteries fully rather than treating them as empty when they hit 50% (saving the bottom half of them for emergencies).

But yeah, having an EV is still a good ways off (2-3 years minimum) so haven’t thought too much about it. AFAIK, nothing about my setup “paints me into a corner” such that I wouldn’t be able to use that functionality.

We do lose power during the switchover. Same as if a backup generator were kicking in (a backup generator is pretty analogous to how I have this wired up currently)

My WFH office, homelab servers, 3D printer, and the fridge are all on UPSs. Fridge is a long story, but a UPS has proven beneficial to deal with its Samsung-ness. Everything else doesn’t really care since it’s only a literal split second to make the switch.

The only drawback to this manual switchover is the oven and microwave clocks are never right. But to be honest, even before we started switching over to solar every day, the power would flash almost as soon as we set them so we largely just ignore them. Side effect now is they’re both timers showing how long we’ve been on solar that day.

Once I get it installed fully, there will be no cutover. It acts as an on-line UPS, essentially, and the only thing that changes is where the inverter is drawing it’s power (PV, battery, utility, or a combo of any of those). It also, supposedly, has a 10ms switchover time if it has to go into “bypass” mode to feed the load directly from utility input. 10ms is comparable if not the same as the switchover time on my other UPSs.

I’m in the US, lol, just not in a very solar-friendly area. The power company data I have access to is a side effect of both their green washing and constantly rising rates. It’s supposed to help you manage your bill more than anything else.

The batteries and inverter I’m using are Eco-Worthy which is Chinese and available globally. The inverter itself is a re-badged SRNE and has proven to be reliable and well built. Not sure if they’ve passed EU certification, but they’re UL9540 and UL1973 certified in the US

The HomeAssistant module was made for Solarman products but is compatible with others such as the inverter I have (which is itself a re-badged SRNE one).

The graph displayed is from the power company website. It’s showing the power I use from them (uploaded from the smart meter). The relevant bit there is the negative space where I’m not using any utility power.

For local monitoring of the PV system, I don’t have anything yet except for the counters displayed on its LCD (see below).

The inverter has a smartphone app and wifi-module but that requires creating an account and letting it upload stats to a 3rd party server which I will never allow. However, it also has a serial port and speaks the Modbus protocol, and it’s pretty well documented.

There’s a HomeAssistant plugin (ha-solarman) that I’m going to setup when I have time. That’ll pipe the inverter stats to a HA dashboard and can also let me change some of the config options from there instead of having to go to the inverter’s panel and set individual parameters.

Sorry it’s blurry, but had to snap it quick since the display runs in kind of a carousel between different values. It’s showing here that I’m getting 2.3 KW from PV right now, one phase of the output is 0.1 KW (the other is 0.9 KW; it displays them separately), the battery is at 53.6 volts and is being charged, and I’ve generated 267.3 KWh since I installed it. The utility input is disconnected so there’s no arrows coming from it.

I’ve got two 16 KWh LiFePO4 batteries (314 AH @ 53v) for a total of 32 KWh.

Already checked, and we only have to involve the power company if any of the following:

1. Feeding any power back into the utility grid (i.e. grid-tied / micro-inverter / “balcony solar”)
2. Using a “make before break” transfer switch that, no matter how brief, briefly couples locally generated power to the utility provider’s grid.
3. If the project requires disconnecting the meter or shutting off power upstream of our main disconnect switch

As is, this system doesn’t touch the grid at all since it’s using a “break-before-make” transfer switch from an old Generac system - it completely disconnects the utility input before connecting the generator/PV’s output into the home wiring. I’m also fine once I have it fully installed because it cannot feed power out of the utility input connection, so it remains isolated (unless I would just happen to hook it up backwards which would be a whole other set of problems lol).

Nice. I did get a few nodes talking with NomadNet but like I said, I needed more out of it before I could see myself using it.

As a simple but functional “hello world” I was trying to make an MQTT relay to receive/push messages and just couldn’t get things going at all. The MQTT part was straightforward but getting those messages to and from the Reticulum network layer was an exercise in frustration. It was more of a side project at the time, so I may double back and put some more effort into it.

Other than being a starter project, my goal was to work toward a higher-level abstraction that I could use TUN/TAP interface to interact with. Basically a low MTU virtual ethernet port. Kind of like the highly experimental VPN function in the Meshtastic python library. Or a virtual serial port between two Reticulum nodes would be nice. Just something so external programs not written specifically for Reticulum can communicate across it.

I really want to like Reticulum, but none of the stock applications fit my needs. I was going to write my own but I just cannot grasp interacting with its network layer. Maybe the docs are lacking, maybe I’m just sane and the project is written by a madman (or vice-versa), maybe it’s a bit of both, but I just cannot wrap my head around it.

• 2x 16 KWh LFP batteries and 10 KW hybrid inverter: $6,000 for the set/kit. Rounded up, includes taxes, delivery, and also $300 to pay a mover to move them from the street to my basement because they’re heavy AF lol.
• 20x 200W PV panels: ~$2200 (averaged $110/panel, some a bit more, some less since I didn’t buy them at once)
• Mounting Rails: $690 (one large kit and one small kit. All-inclusive with things like the cable clips, lag bolts, and grounding lugs, etc)
• 2x 30ft 10 AWG MC4 Cables: $60

Total cost for major components: $8,950

I haven’t calculated the other misc components since I haven’t bought them yet. The inverter’s output is currently hooked into a manual generator transfer switch I got for free, but that’s just a temporary install so I can use it. That means I can’t feed utility power into the inverter yet to utilize it’s hybrid/load-sharing features and it’s just working in “off grid” mode for now.

I’ll be spending a few more hundred dollars on a new breaker box, 60A and 20A wiring, breakers, etc to complete the install (which involves moving the circuits from my existing breaker box into a new one that’s better positioned).

All DIY as far as labor goes, unless I happen to hit a point where the task exceeds my skills / comfort zone.

It took me about 1 day per column of panels (bolting down two rails, attaching 5 panels, and wiring them) for the first two. Each column is 14 feet long and holds 5 panels. That was due to heat, rain, and an excess of caution since I wasn’t comfortable on the roof at all. The third column only took me a couple hours since I was more comfortable by that point. The 4th column of panels I’m installing later this week should be similar to the third.

Ran them down the front and off to the side of the porch roof.

They’re clipped under the eave and running down (and zip-tied to) the porch columns and getting partial sunlight currently. As soon as I have time to get to the hardware store, those are going into PVC conduit.

Thanks! Still a lot of work to do, but getting the first of these on the roof was a huge hurdle so now I just have to repeat 2 or 3 more times.

My app says latest is 2.7.16 for alpha and 2.7.15 for Beta/stable. 😬

I wonder if the app just has hardcoded “latest” values. My app is the latest F-Droid version which was last updated 5 months ago.

That’s what I assumed but wanted to be 100% sure before i committed to two different sized strings. Thanks!

They’re all the same size, I think 8 inch? So big pans are hotter in the middle, and the outer 2-3 inches are noticeable cooler and never boil … gimme a full size induction coil

Oof, yeah that’d be a dealbreaker for me, too, with any cooktop.

given that its like 6 grand or something

Yikes. They didn’t come with an oven and cooktop attached, but I just spent 5 grand on a pair of 48v 16 KWh batteries (32 KWh total), so I guess I’ll just keep planning to use those to power my current range haha.

I was looking at that stove a while back but didn’t see any pricing at the time. Definitely interested since it could charge up and work separately from my main PV and not dip into its battery or draw a lot of current from it. I also like that it only needs 120v and gives you 220v performance because it makes up the difference from the battery.

Guessing it’s going to be a tad on the expensive side, lol.

There is no local or even regional mesh group. I see a lot of nodes when I’m out and about but there’s nothing coordinated. I’ve thought about starting one but don’t have time time to invest right now. From my house, I see the occasional node but none that are always visible.

But yeah, I’d like to get a local mesh group going and publish channel configs for different things, emergency alerts being one they can “subscribe” to or not.

I don’t think I’m up to 200 yet, but my favorite random node name I’ve come across so far was called “The Node Abides”. Always appreciate a little random Lebowski in my life.

I’ve also got a T100e and really like it.

Not sure of the actual name, but they’re like wire nuts but crimped instead of twist. I don’t think there’s a non-destructive way to undo them but you may be able to rip the wires out and use a regular wire nut to splice them back. If not, try cutting them as far inside as you can and replacing with another crimp connector or use a screw type wire nut.

I don’t use MQTT currently, but there’s several things you can do with it:

• Pass some messages as plaintext for use in, say, HomeAssistant
• Bridge meshes over the internet
• Send/receive ProtoBuf messages from an MQTT client to the Meshtastic node and the mesh
• Plugging in some of the mesh mapping programs to visualize the mesh

I tried setting up MQTT with HomeAssistant but couldn’t get messages to come in correctly. Most likely my own fault but I just never got back to it as I didn’t have a specific need in mind when I was setting it up.

Most of what I’ve dealt with were ESP32-based devices like the Heltec V3 (now V4) that have integrated LoRa radios. It should be possible to add on a SX1262 LoRa radio via SPI and flash Meshtastic firmware, but most people just start with a pre-built kit since they’re pretty inexpensive and have battery charging circuitry and everything already onboard (which you’d otherwise have to handle yourself with a vanilla ESP32).

I started with the Heltec V3, and the V4 improves several gripes I had with it. They’re easy to get started with, lots of case designs available, and generally good entry points.

SeeedStudio has a lot of pre-built options as well. My new daily driver is the SenseCap T1000e which is about the size of a few credit cards stacked together. Posted about it here: https://startrek.website/post/34105873

There’s two main flavors of Meshtastic devices: ESP32-based and nRF-based. The former are generally a little less expensive and have WiFi but are a lot more power hungry.

The nRF-based ones are more power efficient and can run longer from smaller batteries. The tradeoff is those only have Bluetooth and lack WiFi. I don’t really use WiFi with these, but it can be useful if you want to connect a node to MQTT.

Check out Seeed to see some of their pre-made options: https://www.seeedstudio.com/LoRa-and-Meshtastic-and-4G-c-2423.html