Alternator or DC/DC Charger Emulations?

[pbawesome]

I'd like to integrate Wakespeed stuff beyond their integrations. Their DC/DC Charger currently doesn't have an integration, but I know it exists on the Victron side.

What I am trying to do is respresent the output of their DC/DC Charger into victron as "alternator charging" it is a 3000W DC/DC Charger.

I will work on how to get that data whether it be through dbus, nmea2000 over can, or even usb serial, or even a victron smartshunt, but I want it to show up as alternator charging in VRM

[freakent]

Sorry this is not something this driver currently supports. That's not to say it's something that couldn't be done but I don't have the hardware or any way of emulating the hardware.

[pbawesome]

I have the hardware. Where are you located? I would be happy to contribute to your project if provided with some guidance. I've been familiarizing myself with your code today. At the present moment I am only using the temperature and GPS portions and it works fantastic!

[freakent]

I'm based in the UK.

To get started with this we need to identify which Victron Dbus service this needs to identify as. The full list is here.

https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus

I have Victron Orion TR DC-DC chargers in my set up. They appear in the dbus as com.victronenergy.alternator (https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus#alternator-and-dcsource)

The only way to know for sure which is best is to set up the required attributes in the service.yml config file and then create a mock up test script that registers itself and sends some dummy data to the appropriate attributes. Then check in the Venus OS UI to see if those dummy data values are being displayed as required.

[pbawesome]

It would be these two
https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus#dcdc-converters
https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus#alternator-and-dcsource

They already have specific wakespeed fields

Currently the engine is off so I'm not getting any useful data. I need to go turn the engine on and see if I can get any useful data out of there.

I do not have a victron dc/dc so I can't see what that would have in there. But I guess now I need to figure out how to create an "alternator" device

[pbawesome]

I guess the question is how do I register an alternator device like this and publish to it?

[freakent]

Let me have a first crack at creative some config for the settings.yaml file.

[pbawesome]

Thank you, I found it but you are the expert here. Do you need to re-run the setup after modifying that file? or does this drivers service reference the /data/drivers directory?
root@einstein:/data# sudo find /data -name services.yml 2>/dev/null
/data/drivers/dbus-mqtt-devices-0.8.0/services.yml

[freakent]

No you shouldn't run setup.sh again,but you do need to restart the service or simply reboot the GX device.

[freakent]

You can try appending the following to the bottom of you service.yml. Be very careful with formatting as the right indentation is very important. After rebooting follow the instruction on the readme on monitoring the log file.

But before you do that, lets discuss it these attributes actually make sense in your use case and whether you would be able to provide values for each.

# https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/dbus#alternator-and-dcsource
alternator:
  ProductId:
    default: 65535 # 0xFFFF
  CustomName:
    default: "My Alternator"
    persist: true
  Dc/0/Voltage:
    description: "V DC"
  Dc/0/Current:
    description: "A, positive when alternator is charging"
  Dc/0/Temperature:
    description: "Degrees centigrade, alternator temperature reading, or temperature sensor on SmarShunt/BMV (not available for OrionXS)"
  Dc/1/Voltage:
    description: "SmartShunt/BMV secondary battery voltage (if configured)"
  Engine/Speed:
    description: "Engine RPN (or should that be RPM?)"
  FieldDrive:
    description: "Current limit in %"
  Speed:
    description: "Alternator RPM"
  State:
    description: "0=Off, 2=Fault, 3=Bulk, 4=Absorption, 5=Float, 6=Storage, 7=Equalize, 252=External control"

[pbawesome]

I will get my data from either VE.CAN through Wakespeed with a configuration change, thus populating the DC/0/Voltage and DC/0/Current fields above. Or probably through a smart shunt.

However I'm realizing that while victron integrated alternator, wind turbine whatever it only shows in the flow ui and the advanced tab on VRM.

Would it be possible to push that data as "generator" somehow? I just want to track the energy generated by the alternator and display it in the installation data graph at the bottom of VRM.

[freakent]

So where were you expecting this to display?

My Ortion TR's show up here under the heading Alternator: