How to get real time date from Sunny Boy Inverters through SMA Webbox?

[Jose_Perez]

Hello,

I was looking on how to communicate with three Sunny Boy Inverters that are linked to a SMA webbox. Currently we get a daily summary of the solar production, but we would like to have real time data uploaded into LabVIEW. The people of SMA said that I needed to use "RS485 protocols" with a software they have called YASDI (http://www.sma.de/en/products/software/yasdi.html); however, I keep finding other information that says that I can communicate with my inverters using the SMA OPC server (http://www.sma-america.com/en_US/products/software/sma-opc-server.html). I also found this forum, http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Sunny-Island/m-p/809129/highlight/true#M368718, where I understood that I don't need to use the OPC server, but instead I can use UDP communication to get the data. I found another forum that talks about using the YASDI :http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/help-with-Sunny-Boy-inverter/m-p/293273/highlight/true#M153892. 

I've tried to communicate with the people of the forums and I haven't gotten any responses; therefore, I wanted to see if I can get cleared up on this issue. Do I need to use OPC server to communicate with my inverters through the webbox or can I just use UDP in LabVIEW?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks

Jose

[Jose_Perez]

Hello,

I got a response from Vincezo: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Sunny-Island/m-p/1794786. I'm currently working with the VI to communicate with the webbox through UDP. Since the PRC protocols to communicate with the webbox are in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), I'm not sure if the data-in string has to be in JSON format. However, the only error I'm getting is 56 in the UDP read function. I've tried increasing the size of the bytes and timeout, but I keep getting this error. If anyone can help me with this part I would very grateful. 

. 

Thanks,

Jose

[PeterGC]

Jose,

If you can attach a copy of the actual .vi and I'll be able to ake a little more thourough look at your code and hopefully be able to help you out.

Thanks,

Pete

[Jose_Perez]

Sure,

I updates the VI, now the read appears to be printing whatever I write in the Write function instead of giving me the responses of the JSON requests.

Thanks,

Jose

[Aldo_A]

Hi Jose,

Have you tried this out? are you having comm problems? If you have decided to go through the UDP route, here is a good UDP example http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4950

If you have problems communicating, you can always try it locally first and then expand to the server.

[Jose_Perez]

I've tried the example from http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4950, but I don't get any responces. I'm not sure if it's a comm problem or something else. 

Thanks,

Jose

[Aldo_A]

Hi Jose,

is your server and applications currently on your local development machine? try getting them to talk on the same machine to rule out that it is a comm issue.

[alv_renewables]

The OPC server from SMA is just a converter from WebBox/SunnyNet protocol to any SCADA you want to use.

I don't think it will help you to understand the SunnyNet protocol.

Maybe this http://256.com/solar/scripts/swrnet_session_protocol.pdf could help you.

I know it's an old topic, but... I'm researching in the same matter.

[Mockingbird]

Hello,

I noticed you posted on a pretty old thread. I just wanted to let you know that if you had a question on this particular post, it would be more helpful to create a new thread and then reference this thread in that one.

Hopefully someone will be able to help you out! If you didn't really have a question and was just posting some information, sorry for intruding 🙂