Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Ad-free version on my Patreon ... patreon.com/TheCluelessEngineer
Finally implementing a simple project for checking the power output of our solar power system locally rather than via a server somewhere in the world.

This is a continuation of two earlier videos:
[1] Local Solar Power Inverter Monitor: Part 1 (Project Idea) [#TCE0325]
youtu.be/AlSxTeN-W1I

[2] M5Stack Cardputer [#TCE0509]
youtu.be/98RpTlwTXIo

Gitub is here:
github.com/BrettHallen/Solar_Inverter_Monitor

For a long time I had assumed I'd need an Arduino, a WiFi shield, a display shield, some buttons ... a real PITA.

I had another think about it recently now that I have some experience with ESP32 devices and realised I could use one of those with WiFi built-in and some sort of display. I then found an e-ink display with integrated ESP32 by DFRobot ... their DFR0676 ... almost perfect.

Whilst I wait for one to arrive I realised that the @M5Stack Cardputer I had would also do the job and had everything I needed.

And with Claude I could get it to generate the Arduino sketch for me in a matter of minutes, instead of me trawling through Stack Overflow posts for a month.

It works exactly how I wanted - just display the current power generation.

I'll implement it on the DFR0676 when it arrives ... and then maybe look at a larger e-ink display ... ?

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From Part 1:
Yeah, I know - this has probably been done 3000 times before but I always find the best way to learn how to do something is to figure it out yourself, rather than just copying someone else's work.

We have a 10kW solar system using two 5kW inverters. Each inverter has a WiFi dongle running a web server. The web server can be accessed internally (on the WiFi network) via a web browser or externally via the company's web portal or using a phone application.

What I've been wanting to do for a while is have a simple display in the house where you could quickly see how much power the panels are generating, rather than having to use a computer or looking it up via the phone.

Years ago, when I was really into Arduino, then I was really into word working, then I was really into retro computers, I made a small Arduino-based temperature device that uploaded temperature details to my website, so I've got some idea how to do it.

I think the Arduino might not have enough memory - the libraries required for WiFi and HTTP parsing would probably take most of the space - so I might need to consider something else. I do have some older Raspberry PIs and a Pine A64. I'd prefer to use Arduino for its simplicity ... the Pine A64 is massive overkill I think!

I used Wireshark to capture the traffic between the web browser and the inverter WiFi dongle so I can see what the browser sends and the data format it receives in return.

It looks like if I do a HTTP [GET] request (for inverter #1) to:

192.168.6.10/status/status.php

Then I will get a HTTP [200 OK] in response with a plain text string like below - I then just need to parse it and display the data ...

1,1065727,48043,1414,56,3922,614,1953,629,65535,65535,0,0,65535,65535,0,0,65535,65535,0,0,65535,65535,3561,5001,2409,1467,65535,65535,65535,65535,3909,348,83659,2

Field 2 = total generated (10657.27kWh)
Field 3 = total running time (4804.3h)
Field 4 = today generated (14.14kWh)
Field 5 = today running time (5.6h)
Field 6 = PV1 voltage (392.2V)
Field 7 = PV1 current (6.14A)
Field 8 = PV2 voltage (195.3V)
Field 9 = PV2 current (6.29A)
Field 24 = grid-connected power (3561W) --- this is essentially what I'm after
Field 25 = grid-connected frequency (50.01Hz)
Field 26 = Line 1 voltage (240.9V)
Field 27 = Line 1 current (14.67A)

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Outro music: "Dreams of 1984" (White Bat XVII) by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
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