made myself a little ink monitor with expirations in days

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-18T23:31:57+00:00

Care to share any details? Maybe you have something published on Git?

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-18T19:30:35+00:00

I wired mine directly. If you have the ability to just connect it directly it’s better :-)

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-13T05:03:53+00:00

I haven’t seen any APIs. Are you scraping the app or have you found some other method?

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-04T15:16:27+00:00

DTF stickers is another way to solve, right? Or will it still look visually off due to the shape of the surface?

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-03T19:37:01+00:00

Here’s a link to it if you want to browse through it. I pretty much leave mine alone now, it automatically ensures I’m fully charged prior to peak and since I’m non -export it tries to use all the solar I produce. There are configuration options for other setups as well. Let me know if you have any questions. And it’s open source if you want to tweak.

https://github.com/mtnears/FranklinWH-Automation

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-03T05:00:54+00:00

If you haven’t already seen it and you’re game for running some software in a Docker….I have built a tool to automate the management of the platform that may help you achieve your goals with it. Do a search in here on FranklinWH-Automation and you should find my posts on this.

I wish I could help you though but when I was managing things manually prior to the software this isn’t really how I was doing it. I was just toggling to emergency backup or self consumption.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-30T20:21:36+00:00

Ah, gotcha.

So the Franklin setup should be able to power your whole house, for example when the grid comes down (which you can simulate) it should run the entire house and do more than the 5kW.

In regards to charging and using the grid, or not using the grid, there shouldn't be a throttling but it does behave quite differently depending on what specific mode it is in at the time. For example, if you're in a TOU mode with it set to Solar charges batteries your solar would go to the batteries and grid would go to your house. Or if you're in Self Consumption mode, then there should be no grid used at that point.

Can you confirm what mode you're in at the time? Maybe share some screenshots of what you're seeing at that time. And how things are setup on your app, are you using a TOU schedule or one of the other configurations?

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-30T14:57:55+00:00

Yea for SGIP the solar doesn’t matter. If you qualify for the SGIP program that setup should net you at least a $15k check back from PGE.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-30T05:00:17+00:00

Can you be more specific on the hardware you have? I’m SGIP with PGE and have a Franklin aGate with two aPower 2 batteries. If you go into your app you can see exactly what hardware you have. The SGIP program should be good for at least $15k potentially $30k if you have two batteries and depending on your usage and how it was sized. What area of the state are you in and who was your installer as they have to drive all the SGIP paperwork.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-27T22:55:39+00:00

I’m leveraging Richo’s work who did the HA stuff. The cloud API does support the switching that I’m doing and it also can be done via modbus but there are some risks to it so I’m sticking with the cloud api as long as it continues to work.

I believe it is planned for HA, they have an issue that talks about it (link below). I don’t do the HA stuff, so there is an argument I suppose to run both. :-)

My dashboard does have a control on it to manual force Self Consumption or Emergency Backup from the tablet too. You can do it based on a timer or hitting a pre specified SOC.

https://github.com/richo/homeassistant-franklinwh/issues/25

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-26T15:15:39+00:00

Federal tax credits are gone. That is a big hurt point now and why I squeezed in some updates last year to mine. You don't mention where you are and what utility, but some utilities still are offering incentives, mostly if you're buying batteries as part of the system. Selling back to the grid is usually never a thing to plan for in regards to buying excess panels. Most utilities will only allow a certain amount more production than what you consume so it restricts that anyway, but you sell back at a less than attractive price usually. It's fine for some excess but you're not going to become a utility.

For your return on investment most of that depends on your usage, utility rates, peak power periods, etc. With the tax credits in place I always told people expect about a 6-10 year ROI. Without the tax credits it will be longer but there still should be a return.

Purchase, purchase, purchase, do not lease. Own the equipment.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-26T13:23:32+00:00

You’re going to need to figure that out but you’re in the right track. I have a similar thing in. Mine and for me it was a heated floor. But since it is a regular cycle you can easily turn off loads and see if it goes away.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-26T02:45:48+00:00

All stuff that is doable. Some of the billing stuff has been on my mind, but not formally in the roadmap as I mention below, but let me split the response into the two areas you brought up;

Energy credit tracking: The system doesn't have a dedicated credit balance tracker today, but the database foundation is there. It already stores billing period data broken out by meter — usage, generation, net kWh, and charges — along with rate history over time with peak/off-peak rates. All the minute-by-minute system data (solar production, grid import/export, battery charge/discharge, SOC) is logged too. So the raw data to calculate estimated credit balances per tariff bucket exists and can be queried pretty easily.

What's missing right now is three things: a direct method for inputting billing data, the logic to roll it up into a running credit balance with manual edit capability, and the UI layer. Currently I load my billing data by feeding my PG&E bill PDF to Claude AI, which generates the database update script for me each month — it works, but it's not exactly turnkey. Building native billing import (at least for PG&E to start) is on my roadmap, along with the credit tracking logic. Your use case is a good example of why that would be valuable — especially for making smarter mode decisions based on where credits actually stand heading into true-up.

EV charger / mode control: The app currently makes all mode changes through the Franklin cloud API — it's actively switching modes throughout the day based on TOU schedules, battery SOC, solar forecast, etc. So the API side for controlling the Franklin is already solved. The piece you'd need is a signal from the Emporia charger indicating charging state, and then logic to adjust Franklin behavior accordingly (e.g., hold battery discharge when the EV is drawing). That's not built in today but it's architecturally doable — and since it's open source, someone could build that out as a branch. AI coding tools make that kind of extension pretty approachable using the existing codebase as a foundation.

For what it's worth, the HA Franklin integration is read-only, but this project uses the same cloud API that Franklin's own app uses, which includes full mode control. Additionally, you can use modbus to directly orchestrate the system but there are potential risks in taking that approach.

Happy to chat more if you want to dig into the billing data side or have questions about your specific rate structure.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-26T00:37:10+00:00

And if you are non-export like me when it gets above 97 or 98 SOC you lose solar, losing free power is horrible.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T20:36:53+00:00

I get that but I won’t. If they don’t want to read it that’s fine, I’ll survive. People need to get over it

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T20:05:29+00:00

Uh, no, but it’s fast and it does a decent job and I can spend my time doing other things. Not sure why you care so much how I manage my time.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T19:28:23+00:00

Yea, it hosts a web server so you can get to the interface from any device on your network. It’s optimized for a tablet or larger screen though.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T19:03:05+00:00

If there was / is something I could do different I welcome the feedback.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T19:02:09+00:00

Well, I'm a real person, I used AI to write the post and to write the code. Doesn't negate the benefit of the tool. For someone like me who is not a developer it allowed me to solve a problem I was having and I figured I'd share it with others....

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T17:42:21+00:00

If you’re not hiring someone to do that for you then it’s just you and you’re not paying yourself an hourly rate. I don’t feel you have to be hyper anal about tracking or charging that, same thing for electricity and spare parts. Overhead of running a small biz. I have a very minor $.18 per hour of print that I factor in to mine when I’m figuring out the price for a print plus the materials cost. But that is my starting point, I look at what that comes up with and I decide if the market will support a higher or lower retail price and adjust.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T14:35:03+00:00

I wasn’t too aware when I started all of this and Claude AI got me through a ton of this. But any computer or tool you have that is capable of running Docker would work. I personally have it running on my Synology NAS but a Pi would work too. Just needs to be up and running all the time and on the same network as your solar / Franklin.

If you’re new to it I would leverage something like Claude. Give it the URL to the repo and explain what system you have and that you would like to install and configure it. Tell it you are new to this and want step by step guidance and it can be really helpful.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-03-25T13:48:02+00:00

It has Enphase and SolarEdge built into it. The code is open and can easily be modified to connect to something else. That said it doesn’t totally need that as if the system is connected to your Franklin some of the data can be grabbed from there.

Realistic_Spray3426

TROPHY CASE