EET-Solmate with HomeAssistant / MQTT

Integrate EET SolMate with Homeassistant using MQTT (read AND write!)

• General Info
• Upgrading - Breaking Changes
• Important Improvements
• Preparation and Quick Start
• Preparation for HAOS
• Script Components
• Run as systemd Service (Linux Only)
• Home Assistant
  • MQTT Sensors
  • Energy Dashboard
  • Template Sensors
  • Total Solar Injection
• Set Values via MQTT

General Info

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

• HA, MQTT and this set of Python scripts are independent units.
  You need to have as prerequisite HA with MQTT setup and a MQTT broker successfully up and running. They can and should therefore run on separate hosts/containers and connect to each other as configured.

• NEW since version 6: you can define an extra serial number for a spare or replacement Solmate.

• NEW since version 5: you can write back data from HA via MQTT to the Solmate!

• NEW since version 4: you can run this scripts as HA Shell Command.
  Though HA shell commands terminate hard by HA post 60s runtime, I have found a way to make it possible... Only a view steps need to be taken and it works, at least in my docker environment which should not be different from HAOS. Libraries needed are reboot persistent and do not conflict with shipped HA libraries. This enables a startup on reboot via automation!

• You can't run this scripts as HA Python Integration.
  This solution contains a set of python files working together and not a single one required by HA. Doubting that making it a single script would work as the necessary error handling will in case restart the script which may negatively interfere with HA.

• You need per Solmate installed, one instance of the script individually configured (if you have more than one). Note that you need some additionals steps when using HAOS by adapting the scripts used accordingly.

• Stability
  Compared to the solmate SDK, the code provided has tons of error handling that will make the script run continuosly even if "strange" stuff occurs.

• The scripts uses and works the latest Python libraries.

Upgrading - Breaking Changes

See the breaking changes for details.

Important Improvements

See the changelog for details.

Preparation and Quick Start

This section is valid when running a dockerized HA or when using a separate host running the solmate script.

See the Standard description for details.

Preparation for HAOS

When running HAOS you can prepare the environment to autostart the solmate script.

See the HAOS - solmate description for details.

Script Components

See the linked description for details.

Run as systemd Service (Linux Only)

When running the Python script on a Linux system using systemd, you can automate it on startup.

1. To create a service to autostart the script at boot, copy the content of the example service
   configuration from below into the editor when called in step 2.
2. sudo systemctl edit --force --full eet.solmate
3. Edit the path to your script path and for the .env file.
   Also make sure to replace <your-user> with the account from which this script should run.
4. Finalize with the following commands:
   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now eet.solmate.service
sudo systemctl status eet.solmate.service

[Unit]
Description=Python based EET-Solmate to MQTT
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
User=<your-user>
Restart=on-failure
Type=idle
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /home/<your-user>/<your-path>/solmate.py </home/<your-user>/<your-path>/.env>

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Home Assistant

MQTT Sensors

When everything went fine, you will see the Solmate as device in MQTT.

Sensor names are prefixed with an abbreviation of the route for ease of identification. This makes it much easier to identify where a sensor comes from and group it accordingly. Examples: live_pv_power or get_injection_user_maximum_injection.

Most of the sensors shown originate from the Solmate but not all. The following sensors are created artificially and add information about the Solmate connected:

• info_connected_to
  This shows where the solmate is connected to, either local or server.
• info_operating_state
  This either shows online or rebooting.
• info_timestamp
  There are two timestamps shown, for details see below.
• button_reboot
  This is a button you can click to reboot the Solmate. Note that this is only functional if the Solmate is connected locally. Though clickable, it will not work when connected to the server as the server does currently not provide the API. As an easy reminder where connected to, check info_connected_to.

The two x_timestamps are by intention. The differentiate the following:

• live_timestamp is updated once every timer_live query interval.
• info_timestamp is artificial and updated once every nightly scheduled query at 23:45
  Here only info stuff is queried. As these values update quite rarely, there is no need to do that more often.

Note that both timers are updated on restart. Knowing this you can see if there was a program restart due to error handling if the second timer is not at the scheduled interval.

Energy Dashboard

At the time of writing, the HA energy dashboard has no capability to properly display ANY system where the battery is the central point and only carged by the solar panel respectively is the source of injecting energy. This is not EET specific. A feature request has been filed. You can add your vote if you want to push this.

Template Sensors

These are template examples you can use for further processing when you need to split a single +/- value into variables that can contain only a positive value or zero or when using a Riemann Integration (see below). As suggestion, use the same value prefix in unique_id as defined in mqtt_topic from the .env file.

Note to reboot HA to make template sensors available.

  # virtual EET Solmate sensors
  - sensor:
    # battery consumption
    # negative values(battery_flow) = charging or 0
    - name: 'Solmate faked Battery Consumption'
      unique_id: 'solmate_faked_battery_consumption'
      unit_of_measurement: 'W'
      device_class: 'power'
      icon: 'mdi:battery-charging-40'
      state: >
        {{ -([ 0, states('sensor.solmate_live_battery_flow') | float(0) ] | min) }}

    # battery production
    # production = positive values(inject_power) or 0
    - name: 'Solmate faked Battery Production'
      unique_id: 'solmate_faked_battery_production'
      unit_of_measurement: 'W'
      device_class: 'power'
      icon: 'mdi:home-battery-outline'
      state: >
        {{ ([ 0, states('sensor.solmate_live_battery_floww') | float(0) ] | max) }}

    # injection power (to be independent of entity name changes) to be used in riemann integral
    # production = positive values(inject_power) or 0
    - name: 'Solmate faked Injection Power'
      unique_id: 'solmate_faked_inject_power'
      unit_of_measurement: 'W'
      device_class: 'power'
      icon: 'mdi:transmission-tower-import'
      state: >
        {{ ([ 0, states('sensor.solmate_live_inject_power') | float(0) ] | max) }}

Total Solar Injection

The Solmate does not provide an aggregated total solar injection value. This needs to be added in HA manually.

If not already done, add a new Integration: Riemann sum integral. The "bad" thing on RI is, if there is a change in the underlaying source which you cant configure anymore, you loose the sum/history and you start counting from 0 because you cant preset it. To overcome this situation, Create a template sensor as source, see the section above, to avoid this situation (the source can be changed at any time). Alternatively edit the config/.storage/core.config_entries file and replace the source (...).

The following settings need to be made, adapt them according your needs. Either do this by adding a yaml config or directly via the Riemann Integration GUI:

sensor:
  - platform:            integration
    state_class:         total
    source:              sensor.solmate_faked_injection_power
    unit_of_measurement: kWh
    device_class:        energy
    icon:                mdi:chart-histogram
    friendly_name:       Solmate Total Injection
    method:              left
    round:               2
    unit_prefix:         k
    unit_time:           h

Set Values via MQTT

Some values can be set via MQTT like injection or boost. Set these values as plain number string without any decimal or thousand separator. For the time being, only positive fractionless numbers are allowed, omit therefore leading + or - symbols. The values will be casted by the program internally to integer. It can happen that when defining values using dot and comma, language settings may mix them up and the cast confuses and errors.

TIPS:

• When using the incoming new values event (MQTT or HA) to calculate new Solmate settings, have a small delay like 1 second before updating them via MQTT.
• Only send values if they have changed.
• Before going productive with dynamic settings, check the log of the python script for possible errors responded by the Solmate and fix them.

INFO:
The script processes the outgoing and incoming messages the following way:

1. The loop interval to check for new values from the Solmate is defined by timer_live and defaults to 30s.
2. A recieved MQTT message interrupts that timer and processing the loop starts.
3. The loop first checks for messages recieved from MQTT and sends them to the solmate.
4. Then all real and artificial values from the Solmate are queried respectively generated and sent to MQTT.
5. Finally, the timer is restarted.