Cayenne Rpi desktop app

I was thinking that a Cayenne app for the Rpi itself that can be loaded from the desktop. Seems awesome to me since I could connect my 12" touch screen and use it locally for my solar power system.

Have you tried using the Rpi browser? We don’t ‘officially’ support it since there are slight UI discrepancies due to browser not being as modern as Chrome, but on the whole it should work nicely. Thoughts?

-B

My current version of Jessie web browser is super slow and glitchy mostly never completely loads. New version of Jessie released this month uses Chrome and it boogies pretty good but when I updated using a new sd card I lost my project so I went back to the old one. Any ideas how to update to new version and is my project on the sd card or out on your servers?

Thanks

Found this hoping I don’t totally fubu it

Sudo apt-get update
Wait for finish
Sudo apt-get upgrade
Wait Long time :grin:
Sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Repeat if you had wheezy before

I’ll let you know how it goes

Most helpful hint here is- get the FASTEST microSD card you can- it definitely affects the Pis’ speed.
Even among Class10 speed cards-
I have noticed that Samsung memory is considerably faster
than PNY, Corsair, Kingston and Adata. Considerably faster.
Get AT LEAST “Class 10” speed microSD memory-

Thanks I will check it out.

Ordered a 16gb Samsung sd today. So, I will format it using the format software recommended. After that can I just copy everything card to card? Also managed to get chrome loaded after upgrading to Jessie pixel and it does much better. Of course web browsing doesn’t update the dashboard often, seems to be a lag time there. @bestes said something about ul not supported but now I have the touchscreen installed and fit the screen using sudo nano /boot/config.txt. Now if only they would add a way to read voltage levels on gpio input channels I could make a voltage divider and reduce to appropriate level. I coulld make a widget that shows solar panel and battery levels and read graph history of battery drain during night hours.

Thanks for your great advice

Hmm. Not sure if a “copy” would work. Give it a try.
I use Win32DiskImager
http://www.raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-operating-systems/win32diskimager
-it takes about 10 minutes to do a burn-

The “other” RasPi method (using some other software imaging…can’t remember the name) I haven’t had much luck with.

-does your PV charge controller (or inverter) have communications? Most do- (Midnight Solar/Outback Solar). It would probably be better to pull the data directly from the charge controller…just a thought. It would be truly useful to collect THAT data. I THINK it outputs the data on a standard “delimited” file structure- to be imported into a database.

My solar energy system is all off brand equipment and very simplistic. Most of the voltage stuff just because it’s there. I’m trying get everything right before I assemble everything in the Philippines.

-are you experienced w/SolarPV?
I’ve installed 12 full-home off-grid systems, but I prefer NOT to use “Grid-Tie”. I do NOT like Grid-Tie

This will be my first solar project for my retirement home in the Philippine and probably the last. I’m using a PowerJack inverter which has been highly discussed on www.anotherpower.com (see “guess who bought a powerjack”) I’ve learned a lot there. The only people having trouble them are grid-tie installs. Mine will be going thru a contactor activated by inverter output, if inverter turns off for whatever reason system switches to municipal power so the inverter never ties to the grid.

I finally got the mcp3008 to read voltage but only the web dashboard shows true volts. then I’m wondering how to scale the widget to the true voltage I’m reading. As in 0-26vdc thru voltage divider = 0-5vdc but I want the widget to show 0-26vdc. I’m wanting to read voltage on batteries, solar panel input, charge controller output. This is not that important just something nice to have since I will be 10,000 miles away until I retire. I won’t have batteries at first because I’m waiting until I’m there to buy LiFPO4 lithium batteries. 800ah worth for around $3800 with shipping. Honda uses these batteries and the bugs have worked out. Each battery is 1.6v grouped in 8’s then series for 24v. I have a battery monitoring setup that monitors each cells charging rates, temperature and resistance. If there is a problem it can notify me by email. Also has a web based dashboard allowing live data and history. I am going to create widgets to cut off a group if a cell goes bad but triggers won’t be able to work since the battery monitor only has one alarm output. I can tie that alarm contact to a gpio input to notify me get my attention.

Does the gpio input need a pull up resistor? Alarm contacts across gnd to input? Just have to figure out which widget will do.

Any ideas are welcome. My Rpi project is posted on anotherpower just a work in progress. When I’ve perfected it I will post my project on Cayenne community.

Yes.

also, I’ve done cost analysis of L16 batteries vs. Li-Po,
-and the COST over the life of the batteries
is cheaper using L16 batteries-
Li-Po is EXPENSIVE, but physically smaller.
…just my 2 bits…

The lipo batts delivered from china to Philippines is much cheaper than USA since there’s no tariffs involved.

Thanks for your advice