Solar panel monitoring (Part 1 – background)
2 months ago we got our 1kW solar panel system installed. It is an on-grid system, so excessive energy is send back into the public network. We started the process with the local energy supplier...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 2 – hardware)
This post will go into details of the used hardware. To connect the different sensors I build a “shield”. In the Arduino world a shield is an extension board that is plugged on top of an Arduino board....
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 3 – electrical installation)
This is the part where you might want to ask an electrician for support. The system uses non-invasive CT sensors to measure the current. So we do not have to temper directly with the 240V (or 110V)...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 4 – setup Arduino Yun system)
I will not explain the initial setup of the Arduino Yun here. You can find good tutorials on the web about this. What you need to remember is the username, password and IP address you assigned to the...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 5 – PHP pages)
The system uses 3 PHP pages and a graphic library for the communication and display of the data. phpinfo.php This PHP page is only to check the setup of the PHP configuration on the Linux server. It is...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 6 – Arduino sketch)
Writing a program for the Arduino was a new experience for me. Spoiled by Windows/Linux and even Android which have basically no memory limit I run very soon into problems with the very limited code...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 7a – Android app)
The Android app contains 5 main parts. The main application showing continuously the measured values from the Arduino board The database and functions to access the database The app widget which show...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 7b – Android app)
The app widget App widgets are small windows that can be placed on the Android home screen. They can be used to show information or data of the application on the home screen without having the...
View ArticleSolar panel monitoring (Part 8 – Parts, IDE’s, Libraries)
List of electronic parts used in the project: [crayon-55f6f9a2cac41605332821/] I got most of the parts from a local electronic shop around the corner. Development environment Arduino IDE => download...
View ArticleESP8266 – Google Cloud Messaging without external server
I was looking into a solution to send push notifications from an ESP8266 module to an Android application. I know that this is possible with the Google Cloud Messaging service. But what I found on the...
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