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Fronius Home Monitor USB?

I have the Fronius Home Monitoring system, and their IG.Access software.
A card goes in the inverter, a special network cable to a Datalogger box,
and USB to my WinXP computer.

But it doesn't like my computer. The IG.Access hangs, trying to find the
Datalogger. I have removed all software packages that had USB devices
associated with them, and deleted all of the USB devices (hidden as well),
from Device Manager.

A driver installs from the Fronius directory, and Devmgr says the device is
working correctly, but the program still hangs.

I tried in safe mode and it popped up a window asking for the port, but
there was no driver loaded at that point.

Does anyone have this running?

The Fronius solution is to give me the discontinued model of the Datalogger
with a serial port instead of a USB port.
 
J

Jim Baber

Jim Baber wrote:

Walt said:
Clarence,

If it's any consolation - I got an SMA inverter because I thought
their communications would be superior to Fronius. And it may still
be, but I'm running into plenty of problems here too.

- Walt Bilofsky
I don't know what problem Walt has had, but I have had reasonably
good luck with my 4 SMA2500s that use the RS485 link between them, and
the last one in the chain is attached to my Sunny Boy Control via
RS232. The Sunny Boy Control is also connected to a PC via RS232 and is
reporting with the included software.

My only problem to date is, one of the SMA2500s lost its stored
memory about 4 or 5 months ago and started over at 0 in it's history of
watthours generated? They couldn't explain why, and it has resumed
working correctly, but it will forever be missing 10,591 Watthours in
it's memory. They did say they would add the missing 10,591 Watthours
back to the memory, if I sent them the inverter, but that would require
my taking it off line, packing it up, shipping it, waiting for them to
do it and ship it back, and reinstalling it when the only problem is a
missing 10,597 kWh. No charge, but I would have to buy the power it
would generate in the week (at best) that it would be gone. It is
accumulating OK now, It just lost 2.5 years of output from it's memory.
 
J

Jim Baber

Walt said:
I'm trying to wring out some communications issues with an SMA 3800U
inverter and Sunny Beam wireless (900 MHz unfortunately) monitor.

- Walt
I guess I am glad I was willing to put a hole in the exterior wall for
the Sunny Boy Control's RS232 feed. I was sorry that I had to at the
time but, in light of your problem?

1. I note the implied question about the 900 MHz, are you having
interference issues with older wireless phones?
2. What other wireless equipment (garage doors etc.) do you (or a
near neighbor) have?
3. How far apart are the 2 units?

Jim Baber

Email [email protected]
1350 W Mesa Ave.
Fresno CA, 93711
(559) 435-9068
See 10kW grid tied solar system at "http://www.baber.org/solarpanels.jpg"
See solar system production data at "http://www.baber.org/solar_status.htm"
 
Walt Bilofsky said:
The first thing is to rule out a problem in the Datalogger. Maybe the
USB connection is fine but the unit is putting out no data or bad
data, causing the program to hang. Have you tried the Datalogger on a
different PC system?

I installed WinXP on an old drive. From there, IG-Access works, connecting
to the Fronius inverter. I can see all of the itmes that appear on the
front panel. The datalogger doesn't have any history, though.

The Fronius tech thinks there might be some jumper setting wrong on the
card in the inverter, but wants the local installer to look, rather than
having me look, since it's inside the box. The datalogger that I have is
only supposed to talk to a single inverter at address 1, but it sees my
inverter as address 0.

The installer would rather have someone come out and remove the card and
give me my money back than work on the issue.

The USB hanging on my normal boot partition is obviously some compatibility
issue, and happens on two different WinXP systems.

I did upgrade the inverter firmware, and I noticed it "saved" my hours of
usage and other setup information, and then loaded it back after the
firmware upgrade. It warned that I would lose my information if the
upgrade was interrupted, suggesting that I do the upgrade well before
"sunrise", which I presume was supposed to be sunset.
 
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