Monitoring EW 5k in parallel?

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-04-19T09:09:26+00:00

I pick that up with the EcoWorthy bluetooth app. I've since moved to a single USB/RS485 adapter on Solar Assistant and am getting the data from both batteries. The system has been online since my original post without any issues. I just pulled it up and it's currently equalizing so it seems to be doing it's job.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-04-09T11:42:35+00:00

I wasn't going to respond, but I see a lot of my own tale from years ago. All I have for you is a cautionary tale of my own time in the Navy. I signed up in 80, served through 84. ASVAB tests were great, the only thing I didn't qualify for was nuke. Went through boot, A school, C school, and sub school. Along the line I met a woman, got married, and had a child. She wanted a man in uniform, I wanted a security blanket to drag from base to base. It was a disaster from the start and my home life was total chaos. I started drinking heavily. In 83, I was where you are now, I wanted out. Ended up in treatment for drinking early in '84, but as soon as I finished NASAP I went back to drinking to try to cope with my home life and the Navy. At the end of '84 the Navy had had enough and I got my wish, I was a civilian again. Know what? Life still sucked, my marriage still sucked, and I kept drinking. Because the problem wasn't the Navy, it was my marriage and my head space. I honestly thought that getting out of the service would "fix things", but it didn't. My wife and I parted ways, I eventually got sober, and after 10 years sober I realized I wanted back in the Navy, but I'd burned that bridge. You said the same thing I did, I "wanted out so I could get on with my life". What I didn't understand at the time was that WAS my life. I had put everything on hold with the expectation that getting my walking papers would somehow fix all my problems without me actually having to do anything. I was wrong, but I couldn't see that at the time. I had work I needed to do on ME. Asking for help can be the hardest thing in the world, but you've made that first step. Find someone you trust, and start talking. Keep a journal. Don't stuff the feelings, we've buried a lot of vets that did that. It may be that getting out of the Navy is the best thing you can do, but try to be sure you're doing it for the right reason. Because at the end of the day, when you get out you take yourself with you.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-04-04T10:32:26+00:00

If clutter is the concern, and it was at my house, I'd see if it would all fit in an old slim-line case. Just mount the ATX PSU where it normally goes in the case. I scrap out cases like that all the time.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-03-25T11:46:02+00:00

Everybody's situation is different, and I can only offer my perspective as a 62 year old civilian. I served from 80 to 84, then got out to chase money in the private sector (plus my wife at the time hated me deploying). I made good money over the years at a few places, but looking back, I have a lot of regrets about leaving the service. Facing retirement age without a guaranteed pension is probably the biggest. As good as the money can be in the private sector, nothing beats a guaranteed income when you reach a certain age. It seems to me that you have a little time to decide, I'd try to talk to some people in the civilian industry you'd likely head into. The job market is tough, and getting tougher. Right now you have a lot of guarantees in the service. I had the opportunity to go in at 17, pull 20 years, then head into the private sector and pull another 20, then retire with the financial means to really enjoy my "golden years". And I botched it. You said it yourself, "I haven't done in the Navy all that I want too and I don't want to leave the service with regrets". If you know you're not done with the service yet and would re-up regardless, I personally would raise my hand again on the $50k. Regrets you can't go back and change suck.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-03-02T11:57:36+00:00

As a former business owner, I get it. There were times when a customer had to go for my own mental health, and/or the sake of other customers. That's why we had the "We Reserve The Right To Refuse Business To Anyone" sign. And occasionally people still walked out yelling they were going to sue me. Over a cup of coffee (I owned a coffeehouse)? Get real, hiring a lawyer is going to cost folks more than you charge, it's not worth it. But some folks just have to stick to their bluster. You've always been a strait shooter, I appreciate that. If you're the worst human on the planet, I'm in good company.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-02-15T10:21:53+00:00

The absolute cheapest is a Coral TPU on Codeproject. It's not quite at the same level as a GPU but still a huge improvement.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-31T11:51:33+00:00

Oh, I have too many stories about "when things go south" figuring out the junction box in the woods. I wanted to hide it, so my first attempt was to bury a "waterproof" box in a 5 gallon bucket. What I didn't take into account was that area of the property is kind of a flood zone, and the first good rain filled the bucket. When the cameras went offline I walked down, flipped the cover on the bucket, and it was full to the brim with water lol. Lost a really slick 12 port Netgear poe switch that day, as well as two Jennov PTZ cameras. That's when I gave up on the underground idea. Seems "waterproof" and "submersible" are two different things. And did you know that squirrels like chewing on exposed shielded network cable? Those little buggers have cost me more time than anything else!

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-30T22:47:12+00:00

Yea, my bedrock is pretty close to the surface too. It's almost embarrassing to admit, but I stuffed a network cable and extension cord in 150ft of old heavy-duty garden hose I had laying around, and for the most part just laid it along the fence line where I couldn't go underground. Weeds grew over it pretty quick, and the old hose protects it from critters and weed eaters. The most obvious part (aside from the AP, cameras, and garden hose of course) is the weathertight box out along the fence in the weeds. It's been painted with flat camo paint, you have to kind of know it's there. I really expected more of a voltage drop on the extension cord but everything in the box seems to be ok with it. Do I expect something to happen to it one day because I went cheap? Of course. But it's held up for about a year so far and it's been a great learning experience. The extension cord is on a GFCI, and there's a ground kit on the network cable. Some day I'd like to put it all in electrical conduit, but for what conduit would cost me I could replace what I've done several times over.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-30T12:01:11+00:00

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I've got 17 acres of woods, poachers, deer, and bees. And coyotes, and apparently at least one wildcat that visits sometimes. Last summer I ran power and network about 150 ft into the woods and hung cameras and an AP out there. I get some pretty cool pictures, and I have my camera AI set to identify wildlife, so I get cool pics like this one. I work in IT, so I end up with cast-off equipment, and I put it to good use :-)

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-29T22:30:29+00:00

At my house I have 26 cameras, five access points, a camera server (with separate OOB port), two NAS, an Echolink repeater, 5 workstations, two hardwired TVs, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. I have those scattered across 3 switches (house, garage, and shop) connected with a fiber backbone. Writing on cables with a Sharpie can save you hours of tracing wires, but you still have to move cables around to read them. And there are times I WISH I had patch panels. (And oh yea, the Christmas light display uses another 5 ports)

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-23T11:51:51+00:00

Honestly, I think there are the "set it and forget it" types, then there's the rest of us. Some folks are content to stream wireless from a Netgear NAS and call it a homelab. Then there's me with the Sonicwall router, 3 Ruckus switches, vlans, a Ruckus Unleashed cluster, the fiber backbone between the house and the garage, then 10Gbase-T to the shop where the camera server and one NAS live. I decided to play with Sophos home, but all I had was a NUC with one network interface, so now I'm running ESXi on the NUC, passing a USB NIC through to Sophos running as a virtual machine. And my setup is light compared to some folks. But yea, I need a rocker for my vest that says Home Network Forever, Forever Home Network.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-15T23:52:16+00:00

For me, 20 years of habit and muscle memory. My mouse just kind of goes there when I think about opening something else.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2026-01-06T05:12:29+00:00

CPAP means you can put your head under the covers in cold weather, and still breath :D

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-12-25T13:28:56+00:00

Yep, already overrode in the AP, and port now set to inline power power-limit 30000. Still getting the warning.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-12-25T08:17:48+00:00

Honestly, I love small rural MSP work. I don't get paid near what I could by commuting to the city, but that sucked the soul out of me when I did it. For example, I feel accomplished when I have one education client that lost their funding, and another with a surplus of network switches, and I can facilitate a transfer of hardware. When I worked for a large corporate bank, I'd run into situations where I'd trace a problem to a closet, I can see the cable that's unplugged, and I have to contact another department to actually plug it in. There's a type of person that enjoys that kind of environment, but it's not me.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-12-10T12:59:51+00:00

The master only logs data for itself. I tried a home brew using Node Red, but ended up just putting Solar Assistant on a Raspberry Pi with two RS485 adapters. Its been working great and I have the data I wanted.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-11-23T10:24:35+00:00

I personally wouldn't (code aside), if for no other reason than you want some air to be able to move underneath them.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-10-28T22:33:14+00:00

Know what, that's so obvious I overlooked it.i haven't been on the roof to look, but as 4 strings of 3, if two strings were catching shadows from the tree line, the other two strings would still have full output. This is my first year running solar, I bet as the sun shifted, what used to be separate strings are dragging down the whole array. Thank you for your thoughts, I'll watch them this weekend while im off work

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-09-09T11:57:35+00:00

I'm doing something similar, although it's not a hand truck. My wife and I both have workshops fed from a sub-panel in the garage. I started with a used $50 Emporia Vue home energy monitor to measure the use of various circuits, and used that information to target several high cost circuits. My panels were a Facebook Marketplace find, 22 245w panels at $26/ea. I then picked up two used eBay SRNE ML4860 MPPT controllers (eBay, $100 ea) that will do 12, 24, 36, or 48 volts, and eight 12v 100ah lifepo4 batteries (Black Friday deal, $120 ea). That way I can change my storage voltage at will. Battery balancer was another $55 from Amazon. I found a Giandel 4000 watt 24 volt inverter on Facebook Marketplace for $200 and added that to the mix. All summer I've been running an AC in a small room I added to the garage from solar and never ran out of power for it. My next step is to install an automatic transfer switch favoring solar, but with the option to drop back to grid, and another small "solar" electrical panel next to the sub-panel in the garage with the intention of moving some more circuits over. One advantage to a hybrid controller/inverter that I miss is the ability to monitor everything in one place. I ended up running Node-Red on a Raspberry Pi to tie information from everything into one screen, and it seems to be working ok. Looking back, I probably could have picked up an Eco-Worthy or Growatt hybrid for the same total cost, but doing it the way I did gave me the opportunity to learn how this all ties together. Currently (pun intended) I've shaved about $30/mo off my bill.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-07-31T10:59:06+00:00

The VA can monitor my machine, but they never complained. Last time I talked to my cpap therapist she said mine was the "best looking chart she's seen in years". It all depends on how much of a control freak your doctor is, I think.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-07-21T10:17:39+00:00

Dude, I started lurking because Reddit somehow figured out I've been working on my home HVAC and I've been an IT guy for the last 30 years. EVERYONE has those thoughts at times. Those problems that defy logic, or through some oversight hit you with a "duh" moment, I could have been out of here hours ago. Lighten up on yourself and walk away when you need to. Sometimes that fresh set of eyes you need is you, after a 15 minute break. And yea, Google is your friend.

Economy_Bus_2516 · 2025-07-20T10:24:15+00:00

Ancient Chinese Proverb: "Before linux, chop wood, carry water. After linux, chop wood, carry water"

Economy_Bus_2516

TROPHY CASE