Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

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jonathan
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 1:12 am

Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by jonathan »

This thread will be for discussing the Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring Service. Thanks Everone who bought early access, the service is now running normally.

Please check it out at:

https://mysolardashboard.snektek.com/

Demo access:

Username: demo@snektek.com
password: password

If you've purchased a subscription, sign up with the same email.

Once you've created your account and purchased the subscription, we will activate your account which will generate your API key. You will copy this key into your solar dashboard portal which will connect it to your cloud account.

You can then login to your dashboard from anywhere in the world by accessing your account at https://mysolardashboard.snektek.com/


Cloud Data Use Infomation:

snektek cloud data use.png
The cloud service communicates with the solar dashboard and your personal device independently. When not in use, the solar dashboard sends only heartbeats to the cloud server. When someone logs in to the cloud service, the next heartbeat is used to instruct the solar dashboard to send all available historical data since the last login.

This is done to reduce data consumption on the cloud to solar dashboard internet connection. Often, this connection is metered, such as with a 4G/3G internet stick. So a low data use is desirable. The default data consumption of heartbeats only is about 7 MB/day. There is a heartbeat every 5 seconds by default. The heartbeat frequency can be adjusted in the config file. To do this, add the following line to the config file:

Code: Select all

cloudSyncInterval=10
This will change the heartbeat to send every 10 seconds. To calculate expected data use, use the following formula.

Code: Select all

Data use in Kilobytes/day = 86400 / cloudSyncInterval * 0.4
Using the formula, we can see that setting the heartbeat to 35 seconds decreases data use to just under 1 megabyte a day.

When the client accesses their solar dashboard in the cloud, the dashboard will transmit data to the cloud. Each day of solar data will be transmitted if it is not already on the cloud. Each day of data is approximately 120 KB. When the user is logged in and looking at the dashboard, today's data will be refreshed every half hour. So each month expect to use 3.6 MB transferring solar data to the cloud and about 0.3 MB for every hour viewing the solar dashboard.

Please respond to this thread if there are any questions.


Updated July 11, 2020 and applies to firmware versions newer than this date.

Jon.
jonathan
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 1:12 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by jonathan »

Please load this firmware to your solar dashboard and click on the cloud icon.

Enter your email and API key, ensure your dashboard is connected to the internet and login to
https://mysolardashboard.snektek.com/dashboard
Please make a post here with any feedback.

Warning: This version of the solar dashboard software will use potentially hundreds of megabytes a month when using cloud feature, so keep that in mind if you're using a cellular connection for your solar dashboard. We are working on a solution to reduce the usage to about 30 MB a month.
xion2000
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:02 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by xion2000 »

I've done the update & logged in via the cloud access and all appears OK but when I login locally I no longer see the graph data
jonathan
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 1:12 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by jonathan »

Give it some time to load all the data to the cloud, check again in a couple of hours
xion2000
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:02 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by xion2000 »

Yes it worked thanks.
Is there any chance that the cloud access can be setup to remember and keep the user logged in? I setup a favorites shortcut but still have to lick on login each time. Its not a big issue just a nice to have!
Any upgrades or changes planned for the future Jon?
In the future which thread should I post on, I've posted this on both for now
jonathan
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 1:12 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by jonathan »

Hi xion2000,

The login time has been extended to 1 yr. Thanks for your feedback.
xion2000
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:02 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by xion2000 »

Brilliant, thanks Jon
xion2000
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:02 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by xion2000 »

Can I reflash my solardashboard with a previous firmware.
Every since upgrading to the firmware for the Cloud service, accessing the SolarDashboad locally has become unreliable.
I use that method to pull the data into Home Assistant so I would like to monitor it for a while with the pre cloud update firmware if I can
jonathan
Posts: 237
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 1:12 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by jonathan »

Hi, sorry for the very late reply. Yes I will link the earlier firmware. We are just now testing a new firmware that will be more reliable.
xion2000
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:02 am

Re: Solar Dashboard Cloud Monitoring

Post by xion2000 »

After setting up my new box, my Cloud service was not working. I presumed it was because I was using a different box so I deleted the box from the server page and tried to add the new one but the system asks me for a voucher number which I do not recall ever receiving, I do have an API number?
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