Home Assistant integration inc Fogstar JBD (1 Viewer)

[dpsuk999]

dpsuk999 Thanks for this I set up VenusOS on an old Pi-2 quickly to monitor my Lithium Instalation for this holiday but hate the clunky interface and it’s limitations. So am anxious to set up an HA server in the van. My whole house and solar system is running on it at home but as Paul Hibbert says “My virginity is beginning to grow back” with no HA projects to do. I have my pi-3 that used to run the house ( I now use a refurb Wise Thin Client) so you have inspired me to get started on the VAN. If you can share any code I and I am sure many others would be very grateful. I struggle a bit with the coding but have found that ChatGTP is great for getting the basic code down quickly. She often gets it wrong so ask her to check her own code.
Do you have Victron Batteries or does BatMon work with Fogstar?

Hi OldAgeTravellers i have Fogstar batteries and use the BatMon integration in HA and can pull every bit of info from the batteries including the ability to switch on/off charging on the batteries too, here are a couple of screen shots:

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

Just having a little search around and found this Victron to HomeAssistant article, ok I would need to run the Pi-2_GX as well as the HomeAssistant Pi but it would then bring in the Victron Shunt, Inverter and XS B2B info as well.
Any thoughts or can the Victron info be brought in to HA directly?
dpsuk999 which sensors do you use for your Fridge? And for your latest counting water in and out?

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

Can’t wait to get home and make a start now. Should I find an excuse to cut my Holiday short?
If I can only get a better dashboard than the awful VenusOs GX. Which with HA I certainly can.

 

[dpsuk999]

Just having a little search around and found this Victron to HomeAssistant article, ok I would need to run the Pi-2_GX as well as the HomeAssistant Pi but it would then bring in the Victron Shunt, Inverter and XS B2B info as well.
Any thoughts or can the Victron info be brought in to HA directly?
dpsuk999 which sensors do you use for your Fridge? And for your latest counting water in and out?

OldAgeTravellers i use these for temperature monitoring in HA:

And I use a 1/2 hall effect food grade water flow sensor connected to a ESP32 integrated into ESPHome. Took me a little time to get the yaml code correct to be accurate. I measured the flow rate and amount of water flowing from each of my taps, both cold and hot to ensure that 1 litre of water in my measuring jug was showing as 1 litre through HA.

 

[dpsuk999]

Can’t wait to get home and make a start now. Should I find an excuse to cut my Holiday short?
If I can only get a better dashboard than the awful VenusOs GX. Which with HA I certainly can.

I have been having all sorts delivered here in Italy whilst I’m on holiday to get my HA/Pi fix ….isn’t Amazon fantastic

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[OldAgeTravellers]

I have been having all sorts delivered here in Italy whilst I’m on holiday to get my HA/Pi fix ….isn’t Amazon fantastic

Has the wife noticed your new “Yaml” contraceptive device yet? HA does start to take over your life. The most important thing I Discovered was “WAF” (Wife Acceptability Factor). Does it make her life easier, better.
A simple thing like a smart plug on the electric blanket and at 10:30 in the evening if she is in then Alexa will Purr:
“Judy, I have switched your electric blanket on for you.”
Yes Alexa on her own can do it but only HA will know if she is in and which room she is in if you wish. Although mine rarely carries her phone so it makes things slightly more complicated.

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

OldAgeTravellers i use these for temperature monitoring in HA:
View attachment 931267

And I use a 1/2 hall effect food grade water flow sensor connected to a ESP32 integrated into ESPHome. Took me a little time to get the yaml code correct to be accurate. I measured the flow rate and amount of water flowing from each of my taps, both cold and hot to ensure that 1 litre of water in my measuring jug was showing as 1 litre through HA.
View attachment 931268

I am amazed, I use those Tuya Temperature/Humidity Sensors all the time, I have about ten working at home. But I never thought the signal would get through the tin case of the fridge but have one in the camper which I use For HA to switch a heater on in the van in winter and have just set it up in the freezer and yes its measuring the temperature fine. Interesting to see it just samples about every two minutes which is how they get the battery life so high. I tried zigby ones but they were very unreliable. The Wi-Fi ones work fine.
Do you use Tuya in the cloud or are you using the Offline “Tuya Local” Integration?

 

[dpsuk999]

In the motorhome I have got 38 tuya devices in the cloud and 1 on local

Of the 38 some are scenes, others are sensors (temperature, movement, doors/windows open etc)

 

[EssexBoy]

So you've got a cheap ESP board picking up the Bluetooth from the battery monitor, and forwarding it on to Home Assistant?

Yes, that's right... I've got some code originally written by the guy who does the openmqtt app on github... can share if needed...

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

Hi dpsuk999, so not a nice day today so spent some time setting up HA on my spare Pi-3b. I installed Mosquito MQTT and then installed BatMon.
It was running OK as it was displaying the two batteries with their MAC addresses. Two Fogstar Drifts 280Ah.
I did Config:
- address: 12:A5:62:23:C9:56
type: jbd
alias: OATs-FS-1
debug: true
current_calibration: 1
- address: 12:A5:62:23:A5B
type: jbd
alias: OATs-FS-2
debug: true
current_calibration: 1

But can see no Devices or Entities to use in any dashboards. I suspect there should be something like "jbd_bms_soc_current" etc. but there is nothing like it.
I've obviously done something wrong can you compare it with your config please.
Thanks,
Steve

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[LostInSpace]

This thread looks very interesting and has prompted me to start enhancing my systems (home and van).

But I think it s probably a task for dark winter evenings when the house and van would benefit more anyway.

 

[dpsuk999]

Hi OldAgeTravellers your configs looks ok, here are mine:

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

Thanks dpsuk999 all looks ok compared with yours so I will check everything again. Maybe reinstall BatMon.

 

[Smokaijo]

I was bought a Rasperry Pi for Christmas so decided to use it as a Home Assistant server in the motorhome to pull together and harmonise many smart switches and sensors I’ve got in the motorhome into one dashboard. It’s taken a while to get to grips with the coding (yaml) but I’ve got a simple multi level dashboard on my phone which I can access and control from wherever iam. I’ve also integrated via MQTT my 2 Fogstar batteries which allow access to a multitude of info to utilize in automation’s. I’ll be adding the info too from various Victron MPPT’s via MQTT too once I return home and buy the various cables etc.

Just thought I’d share this info for anyone interested. Here are a few screen shots but every information button leads into another level of data and switches to control. I’ll be installing a 7” touch screen and developing a front end to easy access the info in the motorhome.

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That’s an amazing achievement love that it’s so informative

 

[matbic]

And I use a 1/2 hall effect food grade water flow sensor connected to a ESP32 integrated into ESPHome.

I have just fitted a very similar sensor to my van I still have to setup my ESPhome device to read it but thanks for the tip on calibration. I was going to include a run dry and leak protection feature as well.

One question : I noticed on your screen shots you had a reading for water IN to your tank. I was wondering what you used for that sensor?

The only way I could think of doing this was to fill tank to full every time and then expect user to press a button in the app to say tank is now full. But worried it’s too easy to forget!

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[matbic]

Just having a little search around and found this Victron to HomeAssistant article, ok I would need to run the Pi-2_GX as well as the HomeAssistant Pi but it would then bring in the Victron Shunt, Inverter and XS B2B info as well.
Any thoughts or can the Victron info be brought in to HA directly?
dpsuk999 which sensors do you use for your Fridge? And for your latest counting water in and out?

I have connected HA in my van to all my Victron gear via the Cerbo_GX (it will be the same as Pi_GX) if you want some yaml configuration to get you started just let me know.

 

[OldAgeTravellers]

I have connected HA in my van to all my Victron gear via the Cerbo_GX (it will be the same as Pi_GX) if you want some yaml configuration to get you started just let me know.

Thanks, that would be very interesting being able to read data from the PiGX. I am still struggling with the BatMon add on, it is getting data from the batteries ok, a test on MQTT shows it is working but I still get no entities from the bat mon to use in dashboards.

 

[yorkiebar]

Been playing with HA today and found an addon for Fiat Uconnect, seems to work well. Now have a dashboard with van location, main battery voltage, fuel level, mileage, miles til empty + inside temp & humidity from a zigbee sensor. Oh, and a camera feed from a Wifi camera I've got in the van.

 

[dpsuk999]

One question : I noticed on your screen shots you had a reading for water IN to your tank. I was wondering what you used for that sensor?

The only way I could think of doing this was to fill tank to full every time and then expect user to press a button in the app to say tank is now full. But worried it’s too easy to forget!

I have another water flow sensor inline with the pipe work used to fill the tank. Instead of using the conventional water inlet where you put a hose pipe into it to fill I modified it so it’s similar to a ‘city water’ connection where I just connect the hose pipe to a quick connect and then I have a water valve connected into home assistant where I can turn the water on (fill)
I know I know not necessary
Also you can manually adjust the water meter in figure by using the service command in your yaml then use developer tools and service to manually put in a figure if you know it (I use to use a Gardena water flow meter on the hose pipe to monitor the input then manually put the figure in here)

 

[dpsuk999]

This is the yaml coding for the manual setting of the litre's already in the water tank. Bear in mind that you set the number of pulses in the setting, so for example if you have 100 litres in the tank and your water meter does 450 pulses per litre then input 45000 and it will show as 100 litres in the tank

# Set pulse counter total from home assistant using this service call:
api:
services:
- service: set_pulse_total
variables:
new_pulse_total: int
then:
- pulse_counter.set_total_pulses:
id: pulse_counter_id
value: !lambda 'return new_pulse_total;'

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[coopc]

I have to say all this tech is very impressive and something I would have loved to do with my Pi modules sitting in a box somewhere
It is now out of my brain scope
Plus the van I have now has very little tech
To know the hab battery is charged all I have is a row of 4 coloured LEDs !!
Keep up the good work

 

[Guigsy]

I'm on holiday in Norfolk. Weather was bad yesterday evening, so I got out an old Pi 3 I had with me and installed Home Assistant. Got Batmon to pick up my Victron SmartShunt. Can't find my Fogstar BMS though. I guess I need to get the MAC address from a label on the battery? Not easy to get to! It also picked up the Bluetooth temperature monitor on the fridge with no configuration.

 

[dpsuk999]

Yes the MAC address is on a label on the battery or I think its also on the app: XiaoxiangBMS app on iphone which is a more indepth app for the Fogstar batteries.

 

[Tude]

Hi OldAgeTravellers i have Fogstar batteries and use the BatMon integration in HA and can pull every bit of info from the batteries including the ability to switch on/off charging on the batteries too, here are a couple of screen shots:
View attachment 931215

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Your batteries have different capacities

 

[Richardcamper]

Goo job .beyond my computer literacy, I'll stick with Alexa and apps whole house runs on her( about 60ish ltems from curtains to fans)van next ...it all works which is more than it would if I tried your route...to say nothing of my mental state if I tried !!!

Can not understand what you are on about. I think our minds are working on different levels!

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[dpsuk999]

Your batteries have different capacities

I purchased 2x 460ah but the actual capacity are slightly different. It’s usual for lithium to be slightly different to the labels/sales blurb

 

[foboundy]

dpsuk999 - I noticed that you are monitoring hookup power. Where are you getting this from? I’ve managed to get my Fogstar battery and my Votronic charger talking to HA so I can get PV power and battery power (from both) but I either need to measure van load or grid to fully populate my power usage card:

 

[dpsuk999]

dpsuk999 - I noticed that you are monitoring hookup power. Where are you getting this from? I’ve managed to get my Fogstar battery and my Votronic charger talking to HA so I can get PV power and battery power (from both) but I either need to measure van load or grid to fully populate my power usage card: View attachment 939077

Hiya, I use one of these on my incoming hookup wire:

 

[foboundy]

dpsuk999 - I noticed that you are monitoring hookup power. Where are you getting this from? I’ve managed to get my Fogstar battery and my Votronic charger talking to HA so I can get PV power and battery power (from both) but I either need to measure van load or grid to fully populate my card

 

[foboundy]

dpsuk999 - I noticed that you are monitoring hookup power. Where are you getting this from? I’ve managed to get my Fogstar battery and my Votronic charger talking to HA so I can get PV power and battery power (from both) but I either need to measure van load or grid to fully populate my card



View attachment 939175

Hiya, I use one of these on my incoming hookup wire:
View attachment 939084

Great, thanks

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