WiFiSolarVoltageMonitor

A ESP8266 NodeMCU based IoT to monitor voltage and current of solar power system via WiFi.

Setting up InfluxDB Time-series Database

This mostly follows the instructions given here: https://hub.docker.com/_/influxdb

Run the server to dump a default config file and then exit

mkdir -p ${HOME}/HomeSolar/etc/influxdb2
docker run --rm influxdb:2.7.1 influxd print-config \
    > ${HOME}/HomeSolar/etc/influxdb2/config.yml

Modify the config. file if needed then run the server again, mounting the appropriate directories from the host and forwarding the 8086 port.

mkdir -p ${HOME}/HomeSolar/DB
docker run -d -p 8086:8086 \
    --name influxdb2 --rm \
    -v ${HOME}/HomeSolar/etc/influxdb2:/etc/influxdb2 \
    -v ${HOME}/HomeSolar/DB:/var/lib/influxdb2 \
    influxdb:2.7.1

Do the initial server setup, creating a user and organization.

export USERNAME=HLSolar
export PASSWORD=ABCDEF1234  # <set to something better!>
export ORGANIZATION=Hill-Lawrence
docker exec influxdb2 influx setup \
    --username $USERNAME \
    --password $PASSWORD \
    --org $ORGANIZATION \
    --bucket default_bucket \
    --force

Create a token for accessing the DB. The "token" part of this needs to be copied into the WiFiSolarVoltageMonitor.py script.

docker exec influxdb2 influx auth create --org $ORGANIZATION --all-access

Add a "Bucket" (i.e database) with a 100year retention policy. The default retention policy is 30days, but we don't ever need to delete this data.

export BUCKET=HL_Solar
docker exec influxdb2 influx bucket create -n $BUCKET -o $ORGANIZATION -r 5200w

Running the WiFiSolarVoltageMonitor.py script

This script needs to be edited to update the vmon_url and the db_token at the very least. Once this is done, it can be started with no arguments. It should print a reading every 10 seconds when it makes a new DB entry. (Place in a crontab to autimatically start on reboot if desired.)

Setting up a dashboard.

The InfluxDB instance has a built-in dashboard that looks a lot like Grafana (and may even be Grafana under the hood). Just point a web browser to the 8086 port on the host running the server. For example:

http://localhost:8086

Use the username/password specified above to log in and create a dashboard. Assuming the device has entered at least one data point, you should be able to see the fields and construct the dashboard.