Tristar mppt 60

Dapdan

Hey all,

I just swapped out my xw60 for a tristar mppt and I am quite impresed. At one point I measured the efficiency based in input and output power and got 96% at around 57Amp output into a 24v battery bank.

These I the features that I like about this CC.

1. Sense wires for measuring battery voltage accurately.

2. The ethernet connection so that I can put it online or use a cross over cable and hook up directly to a computer.

3. The price, I paid $500 for it new.

4. The size it does not take up so much space along side my E-panel and block other important knock points.

5. The fact that I can monitor it online any where there is an internet connection.

6. The data logging and data ploting features so that I can see what has gone on during the day while I was absent.

Those are just my first thoughts for the first week of use. Those guys at Midnite are taking to long. I guess when I get the classic I will have a second controller. For now this one is great.



Cheers...
Damani

techntrek

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Is this in a locked utility room? Those exposed bars on the battery bank worry me a bit. Also, you could save 250 watts a day if you unplug that air freshener. :-D

How do you like that inverter?

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Tech,

Yes it is a locked room with one door in and one door out and has air conditioning. It happens to be my office as well. I batteries came with some acrylic coverings which happen to be off right now. That air freshener needs a new cartridge so maybe then it will pull alot less power, for now it is a niffty night light since it comes with a led controlled by a photo-cell.

The inverter has been in place for about 6 weeks now and give no problems. Only irritant is that when the washing machine runs it cause a voltage fluctuation large enough to cause light to dim at the same frequency as the oscillating aggitator in the machine. Other than that it works well and was at a wonder full price for the size. It appears to be indentical to the Samlex 3024 that was recently discontinued which was highly rated in an evaluation that was posted on this site a couple of months ago. Oh another thing that is a little annoying is the fact that it shuts down at 30V where my previous 24V inverter had shut down at 32V so I can not equalise and invert the same time. This is not a big deal for me since I have more than one battery bank and I just switch to another one whilst performing an equalisation (as you can see by all of those battery switches)

Cheers...
Damani

AntronX

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Hey Dapdan, I was also going to ask you about that inverter. Can you measure it's conversion efficiency?

zeuspaul

Re: Tristar mppt 60

I

just switch to another one whilst performing an equalisation

I thought AGM batteries were not supposed to be equalized??

Zeuspaul

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Ant,

i could measure it conversion efficiency. What I propose (if it is fine by you) is that I calculate that efficiency by dividing output power(as measured by a clamp on meter) and divide that by input power (as measured by either my clamp on DC meter or my xantrex link lite). I will keep you posted.

Cheers...
Damani

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Z,

although that is you are advised not to equalised agms I have done this to recover large telecom type agm. If you search the forum I have an extensive post where I basica document my experimentation of recovering large AGM using a process called IOVR where the cells are effectively equalised.

Cheers...
Damani

BB.

Re: Tristar mppt 60

"Light equalization", I guess, is the latest recommendation... You do have to be careful because there is usually a metal catalyst (platinum, palladium, or something similar?) in the AGM / Sealed battery caps. If you crank too much energy into the battery, those caps will overheat and vent (it is basically recombining the H2+O2 back into water--and releasing heat at the same time).

If I recall correctly, generally charge AGMs around 14.2-4 volts and "equalize" around 14.6 volts (check vendor recommendations for exact details).

DapDan's post with AGM recovery process is in this thread (I think this is the one):

Low rest voltage on GNB absolyte IIP cells

-Bill

halfcrazy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Did you successfully get the tri star on the internet so it can be accessed by computers not on the local network? I figure myself as a pretty clever person but I spent 2 hours on with tech support and I can not get the dyndns server crap to work we just finally gave up.

Also I was a little Leary of opening up all the security in my router seems like a way for people to get in and screw with my computers and stuff.

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

1/2

I first tried the ethernet connection to a netbook using a cross over cable and I was not able to get a connection. I had to then run some cat 5 cable from my router to the CC to be able to monitor what was going on. I pluged in the router and it became active immediately (green and orange light on ethernet jack). I downloaded the msview. I confirmed that the controller had the right address IP, control address and TCP port by accessing the properties of the CC from the menu of MSview and then did an automatice search and "voila". I realised the key is to get the controller serial number in the devices column or "edgebar" as they call it and make sure it is highlighted green. Once it is green you are good to go, just populate the state in the display menu and you can monitor what ever values you want. I thought this was pretty "sweet". I can no monitor all the characteristic of CC charging I want to. Solar Guppy was right you would not need a display meter if you can do this it is way more easier and you can access alot more information than you can on a meter display.

In terms of security you can pretty much firewall as required. Even the router can be firewalled.

Cheers...
Damani

halfcrazy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

yep I had no troubles getting it on the local network computers at all but we can not make it visible to the www

BB.

Re: Tristar mppt 60

I think you have to setup a DMZ (demilitarized zone) with your router so that any accesses to your home IP address (like http://24.45.62.1 to 192.168.2.xxx address of controller -- just made up numbers) go directly to the controller. At least that is how it would be done with my simple consumer router.

Of course, that means any attack to your IP address will be sent to your controller to "handle".

What is the "proper" way to setup a MS controller on the Internet?

-Bill

Solar Guppy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

There is nothing special one needs to configure for web access on the TriStar Mppt, you need the appropriate port forwarding on your router, that's it. Lots of free dns name servers for personal use on the internet, my router as an auto update feature to keep the ip active and correct for dyndns as this is a residential dynamic IP address

Took me about 15 minutes to set it all up including registering with dyndns and the two changes in the router

Here are my two chargers:

http://sgtechnology.dyndns.org/
http://sgtechnology.dyndns.org:81/

dwh

Re: Tristar mppt 60

halfcrazy wrote: »

Did you successfully get the tri star on the internet so it can be accessed by computers not on the local network? I figure myself as a pretty clever person but I spent 2 hours on with tech support and I can not get the dyndns server crap to work we just finally gave up.

Also I was a little Leary of opening up all the security in my router seems like a way for people to get in and screw with my computers and stuff.

I'm not familiar with the TriStar, but I'm extremely familiar with firewalls.

Looking at the manual, I see that it comes with DHCP enabled. If you disable DHCP then it defaults to an IP address of 192.168.1.253, and it assumes that the router is at 192.168.1.1.

That could potentially be a problem. Many routers do default to setting themselves up on 192.168.1.1, but some (D-Link does I think) put themselves on 192.168.1.254. If your router does that, then the TriStar would be looking in the wrong place for the router if it has DHCP disabled.

You can tell the TriStar to always use a certain IP, but that IP has to be outside the range that the DHCP server is handing out. So say you have your router set to hand out IPs from 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.200. Anything below 100 or above 200 will work, since DHCP won't be handing out that IP to some other machine (which would create a conflict with the TriStar that is also trying to use that same IP).

That's not the best way to go though, it would be best to leave DHCP enabled on the TriStar. However, you should lock it in to a non-changing IP address. That's done in the router, by setting the DHCP server in the router to always assign a specific IP address to the MAC address of the TriStar (it's called a reservation). Let's say that your DHCP server is handing out .100-.200 - you could set your router to always assign 192.168.1.101 to the TriStar.

Okay, so now the TriStar is always going to have IP .101.

The TriStar listens on two ports, port 502 for the MS View, and port 80 for the web server.

This could be a problem, because the router's web server also listens on port 80. Normally, routers are configured to allow access to their web server only from the backside. That means that anyone out on the internet who connects to your router on port 80 will not get any access to your router's web server. That's a god thing. That is how you should have your router set up.

So now, from the backside network (your private LAN), if you go to
ht tp://192.168.1.1 (space inserted to break forum auto-url)
you'll get to your router's web server, and
ht tp://192.168.1.101 (space inserted)
you'll get to your TriStar's web server

Anyone who connects to your router from the outside won't get any web server.

Now you configure your router so that any incoming requests from the outside world on port 80 will get forwarded in to a certain IP. You set it to forward those connections in to 192.168.1.101 (the TriStar). This will allow you (or anyone) on the internet to connect to the TriStar's web server and view the TriStar web pages.

This does NOT compromise the security of your network, since only requests coming in to port 80 will get forwarded, and they'll only get forwarded to the TriStar's web server.

I don't know if the TriStar's web server pages are read-only or read-write. What I mean is; Can the TriStar be configured from the web interface, or does it only have pages that give information?

If the pages only give out info and don't allow you to configure the TriStar, then that's fine.

Now, the MS View software connects to the TriStar on port 502. If you wanted to access the TriStar using MS View from outside your network, you would also have to setup the router to forward port 502 to the TriStar's IP.

At this point, never having seen MS View or looked at how it connects and how the security is setup, I would NOT recommend that. Access from the outside world should be only to the TriStar's web server and only to see info pages.

Any access which allows the TriStar to be configured from the outside world should be disallowed.


The next thing is the dyndns. The TriStar doesn't support it, so you have to set it up on some other computer on your internal network, OR your router might support it. Either way, all you do is sign up for a dyndns account, and either configure the router or a dyndns client on one of your computers.

All the dyndns does is to tell the dyndns server, "hey, I'm at this IP". Then anytime someone tries to go to halfcrazy.dyndns.org (or whatever your actual dyndns address is) the dyndns server will tell them to go to whatever IP your router was on the last time dyndns got a report from you.


Once this is all setup, then all you have to do is go to
ht tp://halfcrazy.dyndns.org (space inserted)
and since it's http it will hit your router at port 80, which will forward into the TriStar.


The thing with URL of ht tp://tsmpptSERIALNUMBER is a bit of a red herring as that is NOT a normal internet URL. That URL only works for computers inside your private network that are running Microsoft NETBIOS protocol. Any machines outside your network cannot get to your TriStar using that sort of URL, and any machines inside your network that aren't running NETBIOS (Macs) won't get anywhere with that URL either.

Better to access the TriStar using a standard IP URL such as
ht tp://192.168.1.101
or
ht tp://halfcrazy.dyndns.org


Hope this helps.

BB.

Re: Tristar mppt 60

I just got a message from a nice person at Morning Star:

We have a companion doc on our website that walks you through the process of setting up the TSMPPT on your local network as well as the www.

http://www.morningstarcorp.com/en/su...cfm?ItemId=417

I hope this helps too.

[see post below regarding writable web configuration pages]

-Bill

dwh

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Um...

Just looked at Guppy's and I see that the web server DOES allow configuration changes. There is a switch on the TriStar that turns that off and it should be turned off so hacker types like me can't screw with your settings.

I assume that Guppy has his turned off so if I tried to make changes from the web interface they wouldn't actually happen - but I'm not going to try it.

tallgirl

Re: Tristar mppt 60

dwh wrote: »

I assume that Guppy has his turned off so if I tried to make changes from the web interface they wouldn't actually happen - but I'm not going to try it.

Where's the spirit? Where's the spunk? Where's the 10 to 25 years in the pen for computer trespassing?

dwh

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Looking at Guppy's I note that one has Ethernet power saving turned on, and the other doesn't.

I also see that the TriStar supports SNMP, which really ROCKS, since it would allow you to use something like RRDTOOL to make nifty graphs:

http://www.mrtg.org/rrdtool/
http://www.mrtg.org/rrdtool/gallery/index.en.html


(I'm an MRTG/RRDTOOL graphing fanatic. I always put monitoring in place when I setup a network, and graphs are the best "at a glance" way to see that everything is working as it should.)

dwh

Re: Tristar mppt 60

tallgirl wrote: »

Where's the spirit? Where's the spunk? Where's the 10 to 25 years in the pen for computer trespassing?

Actually it does say that that MODBUS writes over Ethernet is enabled...

I'm not worried about doing the time - I'm worried that the Guppy will gripe at me for mucking about with his gear. Engineers are touchy about their gizmos and thingamajigs.

halfcrazy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Solar Guppy wrote: »

There is nothing special one needs to configure for web access on the TriStar Mppt, you need the appropriate port forwarding on your router, that's it. Lots of free dns name servers for personal use on the internet, my router as an auto update feature to keep the ip active and correct for dyndns as this is a residential dynamic IP address

Took me about 15 minutes to set it all up including registering with dyndns and the two changes in the router

Here are my two chargers:

http://sgtechnology.dyndns.org/
http://sgtechnology.dyndns.org:81/

Ok morningstar had me make 4-5 changes in my router at least and set up a dyndns account and still no joy. I understand for the people like Solar Guppy and the like this is a cake walk but for the more technically challenged like myself and morniongstar tech support this seems to be rather difficult

I know we forwarded 2 ports in the router and set up 2 or 3 other things and then we did the dns acount and why it does not work is beyond me.

Solar Guppy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Could be your router, many home routers do not function when you loopback , meaning you can't access a your routers WAN IP from within your local LAN on the same router.

There is zero anything special about the Morningstar web interface, its just like any other IP based device that you would like to have accessed from the internet

If you want to try something, enable ping response in your router and try a ping to both your IP address and/ or the dyndns hostname to see if its something on that end or do a trace route to see where the packets are being dropped.

halfcrazy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Solar Guppy wrote: »

Could be your router, many home routers do not function when you loopback , meaning you can't access a your routers WAN IP from within your local LAN on the same router.

There is zero anything special about the Morningstar web interface, its just like any other IP based device that you would like to have accessed from the internet

If you want to try something, enable ping response in your router and try a ping to both your IP address and/ or the dyndns hostname to see if its something on that end or do a trace route to see where the packets are being dropped.

The problem is I need that in English I am lost with what you just said. I will call tech support again on Monday and maybe explaining this to them they can help me?

Solar Guppy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

OK, I was giving you the basic trouble shooting skills ... since this is not your area of expertise I can't make it any simpler as its completely specific your router

The issue has nothing to do with MorningStar ... either you haven't configured your router correctly or it possible your ISP blocks port 80 ( http )

If you want, enable remote administration on your router and PM me your IP address and user login credentials and I'll take a look. Also include what you have setup as the IP on your TriStar

SG

dwh

Re: Tristar mppt 60

halfcrazy wrote: »

Ok morningstar had me make 4-5 changes in my router at least and set up a dyndns account and still no joy. I understand for the people like Solar Guppy and the like this is a cake walk but for the more technically challenged like myself and morniongstar tech support this seems to be rather difficult

I know we forwarded 2 ports in the router and set up 2 or 3 other things and then we did the dns acount and why it does not work is beyond me.

What is the URL that you are tying to get to?

I.e., how are you trying to test the dyndns?

boB

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Dapdan wrote: »

Hey all,

3. The price, I paid $500 for it new.

Those are just my first thoughts for the first week of use. Those guys at Midnite are taking to long. I guess when I get the classic I will have a second controller. For now this one is great.

Cheers...
Damani

That's a great price ! Did you get a display with it too ??

Yes, we are taking too long. Sorry about that. We hope to start shipping in about 3 weeks. Hey, that's OK... Morningstar had been working on this MS-MPPT unit for something like 8 years I believe. We heard about it first many years ago. Some of this stuff ain't easy. OK, a LOT of this stuff isn't easy otherwise everybody would be doing it.

So, maybe eventually we could swap your MS-MPPT for a Classic. I'd love to get my hands on one of those to really look at. I know these are good controllers though, but it is too bad that one has to open up ports on the router to get outside internet access.

boB

Solar Guppy

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Upnp would be nice, not sure how many megabyte of flash that would take up though to implement :roll:.

It how things like xbox game consoles setup automatically the necessary port forwarding in routers without the need for end users to do any configuration changes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

boB,

I believe you boB all of what you do is all over my head. I am an engineer as well (Civil & Structural) so I know how it can be to want to get thing just right and have built in factors of safety and redundances.

Tell me when you want my CC and we can make an exchange anytime you want. I don't mind doing in the next couple of weekes seeing that I plan on travelling to NY end of the month. Let me know I am ready when you are.

You are doing a great job at Midnite I am sure of it, I am just wondering when you guys plan on building an inverter so we can get the full package from you guys... that would be "sweet". Say hello to Robin for me I must give him a call.

It did not include a monitor and maybe Guppy is right do you really need it when you can access more info online and now-a-days being online is like having a cell phone. It is possible to be online 24/7 through different devices. Maybe you guys should write an iphone and/or an android app so one can have access to this info on one's cell phone all the time. So maybe you guys can offer a classic without the fancy display(if it makes it significantly cheaper) and one can access all necessary info online.

Cheers...
Damani

tallgirl

Re: Tristar mppt 60

dwh wrote: »

Actually it does say that that MODBUS writes over Ethernet is enabled...

I'm not worried about doing the time - I'm worried that the Guppy will gripe at me for mucking about with his gear. Engineers are touchy about their gizmos and thingamajigs.

Maverick is going to sell me a 130 watt panel to replace the 60 watt thingy I have on my "lab" array. As soon as I get that all hooked up, I'm going to put one of my little boxes on the Interwebs for people to abuse. And prolly even put a small MS inverter on as well, so people can turn a light in my backyard on and off. And maybe a webcam.

Some engineers like the mucking, others not so much.

boB

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Dapdan wrote: »

boB,

You are doing a great job at Midnite I am sure of it, I am just wondering when you guys plan on building an inverter so we can get the full package from you guys... that would be "sweet". Say hello to Robin for me I must give him a call.

Cheers..
Damani

Damani, we've been working on an inverter for about a year and 1/2 or so.

Yes, iPhones (etc.) will be part of the logging too. It's the "in" thing y a know !
What do they say ? "There's an app for that"...

boB

Dapdan

Re: Tristar mppt 60

Ok, that settles it I am not buying another inverter until you guys bring yours to market. I will wait. I have been looking to upgrade to 48v (Planning on getting the xw60488). I dont need to do it now so I will wait. You guys are obviously on top of everything here, little wonder you guys are all Engineers.

Cheers...
Damani

System2

how to set up this webpage

could you please tell me how to set up this webpage?