SMA Sunny Webbox Logger

Purpose

Purpose of this plugin is to read from SMA Sunny Webbox solar loggers.

Issues

There are 3 ways to access data from a Sunny Webbox:

1. Modbus. This is by FAR the preferred way to access Sunny Webboxes. So in the first instance, ask the client to turn on Modbus. If this is available, use the SMA Sunny Central or SMA Cluster Control modbus plugins

2. FTP. We can get data, but it is delayed by 5~15 minutes. Data is limited to once every 15 minutes.

3. Web scrape it This cannot be undertaken, since a login will prevent the administrator from logging into the system.

This plugin will only undertake FTP collection (#2 above). In the old version of SMA Sunny Webbox, the FTP CSV files do not change. In the NEW versions, the entire CSV file is re-written every 5 minutes and the fields will change from minute to minute. So there is no guarantee that the headers will be consistent. Furthermore, at random times in the day, the entire CSV file is archived and a new started. This plugin will handle all these issues. A discover run will show the latest values in the FTP file, as well as the variables that will not be collected. If you need these variables, contact Ardexa.

Arguments

• ip_address This is an IP address like 192.168.1.4

• --auth_file. This is a file with 2 lines, first line is userid and second line is password. This is the authentication for the FTP server on the SMA Sunny Webbox.