I just joined this forum (I have a Raspberry pi2 that I want to experiment with) I'm building a solar, wind, diesel powered System. OK I'm building a cruising sailboat with 500watts of solar, 600Ah of deep cycle battery capacity. I've already got my pi acting as a MNEA mulitplexer, so I thought that Maybe I could make it work a bit harder and earn its place aboard the boat by replacing traditional battery monitor systems. I currently have a 500amp (50mv) shunt installed. can the Emon Pi connect to this and monitor the energy usage? I also have a Tracer Solar series A ( the new one) MPPT controller that outputs data over RS-485. can the emonPi/OpenEnergyMonitor gather data from this and present it locally? the Pi would also have to host the website for all of this monitoring.
Does this sound feasible?
thank you.
Pierre
Re: EmonPI newbie question!!
Unfortunately, the analogue front-end for the emonPi is a cut-down version of the emonTx, and so it is only directly suitable for a.c. inputs. If you're prepared and able to make your own pcb to replace it, then it ought to be possible, but you need to be very careful with how you connect as you definitely don't want ground loops and even a small fraction of the battery current returning via your electronics. For that reason, I'd strongly advise you to use an isolated input transducer of some sort (e.g. a Hall effect device) rather than (or as well as) the shunt.