I re-did my first solar install to be more permanent! Everything is now a few inches away from the wall to prevent water seepage, and there's drip loops where there should be drip loops.
In the box is an ESP32 running esphome that talks to the solar controller over modbus to collect metrics on the solar setup itself. (It reports back to @homeassistant.)
I still need to plug the hole in the waterproof box so the wasps don't find a new warm place to live. 😨
Oh. I also need to figure out a better way to do a quick disconnect on the battery for safety than spring clamps, but the spring clamps work for now.
@opsnlops How quick is quick? I use Anderson power poles in various colors for all sorts of DC applications. They disconnect quickly enough for me. I fuse everything so I don't have to grab wires with the insulation melting off in order to effect an emergency disconnect. (Been there, done that, learned to fuse everything.)
@shuttersparks Yeah, something like that could work. I really need to get fuses in-line. This is a 12v system, and it's in a shed that I don't really care about, but I wanna learn how to do things properly. 😅
@opsnlops Yeah. Fuse everything according to the gauge of wire. High current and melting copper wires is not fun. Plus it can start a fire and it smells bad. Hahaha.
Anderson Power Poles are fabulous connectors. I've used them for all DC stuff since 1994. Check out the ham radio standard way of assembling them and you'll be compatible with everything too.
@opsnlops I'm not into solar (yet). But, in my opinion, Andersons is what they ought to be using. Hah.
When I first encountered them in 1994 I was surprised that it was even possible to make a genderless polarized connector with no exposed contacts. Blew my mind. They were too cool not to use. They were immediately adopted by my RACES group in Southern California and then rapidly spread throughout the whole ham community.
Gendered connectors are okay when there's a clearly defined power source and power sink or user. But what about a rechargeable battery? When it's charging it's a sink, when it's powering something it's a source. This is an unsolvable problem with gendered connectors.
@opsnlops The standard is red/black for 12 volt stuff. I use other colors for other voltages. I use sky blue/black for 5V regulated power, and yellow/black for 20V unregulated or semi-regulated power.
Obviously, you can do as you wish, but I'd avoid using red/black for anything but 12V. They're so common now (power supplies and batteries come with Andersons built into the panel) that people assume a red/black Anderson is 12 volt power.
@shuttersparks Makes sense. In my normal stuff I use red/black for 5v, and other colors for 12v. For solar I might adopt the red/black for 12v, like what's visible in those photos.
@opsnlops Yeah, within your own world, you can do as you wish. But if a friend drops by, they'll assume a red/black Anderson is 12 volts. Haha. They've become *that* common. Also, products like power supplies come with Anderson's right on the front panel to plug into.
They take a little practice to assemble, but are easy. They are also stackable in X and Y to any number of contacts, limited only by your strength to plug it in. Hahaha.
If you really want to stay with red/black for 5 volts, one thing you could do is stack the two connectors in Y instead of X.
I'll also mention that red and black housings are cheap because they're so common. Other colors are spendy.
@opsnlops Seems very spendy. Fuses are pretty low-tech devices.
For ATO fuses I use these:
https://www.amazon.com/Nilight-NI-FH01-Automotive-Holder-10-Warranty/dp/B07426WCLM
For 5x20 fuses I use these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0813Q4S6P/
For PC mount 5x20 fuses I use these:
@shuttersparks Seem like this style is what a lot of people use for solar: https://a.co/d/90fhstj
I think that'd work great.