Step 3 Software Setup

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Download, Compile, Upload

Two ways:

• Go to the latest releases and download the firmware.bin
• flash with esptool.py: esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART write_flash 0
• Use your favorite serial monitor to configure
  • must send whole lines at once, so line-buffered sending.. gnu screen won't work. Arduino IDE will, pio device monitor will.

OR

• Clone the project
  • git clone https://github.com/opensolarproject/OSPController/ && cd OSPController
  • or download a zip of the project
• Open the project in PlatformIO (atom or VSCode)
  • Use the GUI's upload button
  • or run pio run -t upload if you've got platformio configured and ready to go.
• Now use the platformio monitor button / pio device monitor to open the CLI and:

Configure WiFi

• Using a serial monitor you can send commands to save the wifi credentials
• Type help for a list of values, actions, and prefs
• Send wifiap mynetwork, then wifipass mypassword, then save ` (using, you know, your ap and password for your wifi)
• it should say it connected! You should now be able to ping mppt.local on your computer and go to http://mppt.local/ in your browser

Configure MQTT DB (Mosquitto)

• two ways:
  • Use the serial monitor to set mqttServ, mqttUser, mqttPass, mqttFeed, then run save and connect. or:
  • curl mppt.local --data "mqttServ=192.168.1.2&mqttUser=mpptuser&mqttPass=mypassword&mqttFeed=solar/mppt&save=on&connect=on"

Next step, see the data

Interested in seeing that data? Keep going.

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Some MQTT DB (Mosquitto) thoughts / my setup

• Right now OSPController only supports one MQTT DB (planning on changing this though).
• I personally run a mosquitto server locally then forward some variables (using a bash script) out to adafruit.io for really nice charts and dashboards.
• I run Mosquitto locally unencrypted with a separate user/pass for each thing connecting-in. I then use Haproxy to forward an SSL-only port of Mosquitto out to the public internet using my already-setup let's encrypt cert. Haproxy is kinda amazeballs. (⚽️😲🏐) It'll let you forward any tcp connection of unknown protocol as now-encrypted TLS TCP. Here's what's in my haproxy.cfg:

#MQTT passthrough
frontend mqtt
        bind *:8883 ssl crt /etc/ssl/mysite.com/pemfile
        mode tcp
        use_backend mqttb
backend mqttb
        mode tcp
        server mqtt  127.0.0.1:1883

This lets you use a real, verifiable, TLS certificate with your setup. Cool.