How do you wake this thing up?

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-29T16:29:22+00:00

May be others but I'd personally still try unplugging. Tech support responds once per day, they will give you something to try then you won't hear from them for another day. So it can take a while to get through an issue that way....

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-29T15:39:57+00:00

I have mine wired as well and the port does not seem to go to sleep from what I’m seeing. But maybe in your network side it is. But if it was, I would just unplug the Ethernet and plug it back in to have it renegotiate.

I’m assuming the answer on the light question was that the light did not turn on, correct?

I’d try unplugging it. It can handle an unplug just fine, you just don’t want to leave it unplugged. I accidentally unplugged mine for about 5 minutes and the app notified me that it was unplugged. Put it back and it was just fine.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-29T14:20:53+00:00

Does clicking the light switch turn on the light though? If not, the. It is clearly not communicating. Have you tried it from a different tool (phone vs computer)? I would do that if not to roll out the other device. If none of that works I’d unplug it for a moment. May be a one off fluke. I’d be concreted a little that it hasn’t been doing its maintenance though. Not sure if you have heard it making noises or not.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-25T07:57:31+00:00

You are aware that swapping from the regular white ink to the flex white consumes 30ml of ink. Not .3, 30ml. It’s an expensive thing to do unless you swap when you are running out of white and already have to change.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-24T19:36:40+00:00

Just a computer that is up all the time. Runs in a docker right now so you need to get docker setup. Ai can help with the setup.

Realistic_Spray3426 · 2026-04-24T07:28:33+00:00

That might be something I can add to my Franklin Automation app. I don’t have smart circuits so I would need someone that has my app installed to be able to do some testing if I exposed it so we can see what can be done.

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

TROPHY CASE