Sunday, September 11, 2016

No local interface

I recently had solar panels installed.  In terms of ios devices this is probably one of the more annoying ones.  Almost all of them have some form of web interface run by a company that has to stay afloat.  These panels should last *at least* 25 years and I really don't want to loose monitoring because they go out of business.  There are actually at least 2 devices that are this way.
  • The power production meter (by solar-log) as installed is using a cellular connection making things even worse (odds that the cell modem works in 25 years?).  Thankfully it also has Ethernet which I need to get the Solar company to hook up as its in a meter box on the side of my house this isn't a simple plug and play.  Once its hooked up I'll know more about its local query ability.
  • The panel monitoring box itself pushes to a hosted web-ui (which has already *lost* per-panel data collection in the new webui, thankfully the old one is still around).  Its not clear yet if there is a full API, but really its still not local.  If they go bankrupt can I still monitor my panels?
I don't really mind this style of UI for devices that are expected to be short lived ( < 3 years ) but anything more should have a local interface.

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