https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/postid/28504/

I'm not sure what Growatt inverter you have, but it should have a socket set aside for modbus communication. If you go down this route, it's very easy to get put off by the amount of technical jargon surrounding what is actually a very simple process. I've no idea how technically literate or enthusiastic you are, but if you can get past terms like modbus, RS485, RJ45, ethernet, serial connection and so forth (each of which is actually very simple to explain), you can suddenly find yourself faced with an "a-ha" moment.

The overall concept is as follows:

• Your inverter's configuration is basically a bunch of registers that can be read (or updated) by receiving or sending a number.
• That number, when you look at it in what an electronic machine recognises, is just a stream of ones or noughts (or, thinking about it another way, ons and offs). That's binary for you.
• In order to send or receive those ones or noughts, you have to have a wire over which an electrical pulse can be sent and another wire over which another pulse can be received. Since the sending and receiving signals are sequential (i.e. one set of pulses after another), they are said to be sent in serial (as opposed to parallel) and so the cable containing those two wires is a serial cable.
• Your inverter should have more than one place to plug a serial cable into, and the one most likely to be of use in this scenario is one that is labelled as RS485. Do not worry about what RS485 means.
• Perhaps unusually, Growatt normally provides that RS485 interface with what is known as an RJ45 socket. That means the socket has a particular shape and 8 pins. You may find it recogniseable as the shape of socket into which you might normally plug a network cable. However, in this case, whilst the plug and socket are the same, it is definitely not a network socket and so you should not plug a cable into that and also into your router or network switch.
• As it happens, Growatt only use two of the pins in their RS485 socket, and that is explained in my thread mentioned above. That means that if you plug a network cable into that socket (remembering not to plug the other end into anything network related), that network cable becomes a serial cable, and six of the wires in it are irrelevant.
• If you remember what I said about serial cables earlier, they are intended to take a stream of electrical pulses. Those pulses are generated by your computer via its own serial interface, and there are a few to choose from. Firstly, you may see a socket with nine holes in it which happens to be called a COM port. Alternatively, I'm sure your computer has more than one USB socket. Both of these are serial interfaces and so it's perfectly possible to snip the end of the previously mentioned network cable and wire the necessary two wires into an appropriate plug to fit into the COM or USB port. Alternatively....
• Since I happen to have a handy network available, I snipped off the end of the network cable (or something like that - you can read about it in the thread) and connected the two necessary wires in it to a WaveShare RS485 to Ethernet converter. Since it's now done the necessary converting, I was able to plug that convert into the network and so safely achieving what I said a few points back not to do. This then means that, instead of talking to the inverter using the serial port of a computer I'm able to talk to it over the network. In effect, I'm daisy-chaining a network conversation and a serial conversation together.

1. Snip the end off a network cable and bare two wires.
2. Wire the two bare wires into an RS485 to Ethernet converter (assuming you do it the way I did it rather than the serial port way preferred by @cathoderay - who can also help here if you want alternatives)
3. Plug the other end of the network cable into the inverter.
4. Plug another network cable into the converter and also into your network switch or router.
5. Muck about a bit with Growatt settings to put the RS485 port into VPP mode (as per the user manual).

With the physical connection sorted out, it's worth a bit of a rundown of the communication that then needs to happen. Those ones and noughts I was talking about earlier are parts of a conversation that needs to follow a commonly understood set of rules - a language, if you will. In the same way that having one person talking Swahili into a phone connected with another who only understands Esperanto, communication won't happen even though they can hear each other. In this particular case, the inverter needs to be talked to using a "protocol" called modbus. If you want to write your own Python scripts to talk modbus via a serial port connection (which is why I mentioned @cathoderay), you'll need to understand modbus a bit better; it's a learning curve, but not impenetrable and going that low-level does offer extra flexibility. Alternatively, if you want the plagiarists way that I used, you can use your Home Assistant server, install the Solax inverter modbus integration and configure it to talk with the network address of your RS485 to Ethernet converter. The authors of the integration have done all the understanding of modbus that's necessary so you don't have to.

So, (and I'm assuming you follow my path using Home Assistant here) with a physical connection in place and with Home Assistant talking modbus with your inverter, pretty much every setting on your inverter is exposed for you to read and, where appropriate, amend. There are a lot of settings. You will have complete control, whether it's telling it to charge the battery from grid or deal with electrical load first. You can find out the battery's state of charge, the kW being produced overall or on each solar array string. You can see the grid voltage, the battery voltage and many more. You can certainly see everything that's displayed in the Growatt portal but, instead of seeing a snapshot every 5 minutes Home Assistant is pulling it every 20 seconds or so, even if your Internet connection is down.

If you want to then start reading through my series of articles on home automation, that then takes you through the wider implications of using this kind of control to incorporate kit like your inverter into a more cohesive and "smart" whole. Obviously, if you have any questions - almost inevitable, I suspect - please post them and we can help at each step.

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/are-you-getting-the-most-out-of-your-renewable-energy/

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/choosing-a-home-automation-system/

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/device-integration-home-automation-guide/

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/home-automation-growatt-energy-integration/

One more thing; I mentioned @cathoderay did something different and that's here.

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/renewable-heating-air-source-heap-pumps-ashps/a-beginners-guide-to-heat-pump-monitoring-reloaded-v2/

He didn't talk to an inverter; his modbus solution was for talking to a heat pump. However, modbus is modbus so his solution would be straightforward to adapt for your inverter, just sending different ones and noughts to change different parameters. As I said before, it's more low-level and so would require more hands-on and more understanding but it's nowhere near as complex as the jargon necessarily involved would suggest. Read and mull over as a contrast.

but the only realistic alternative I've come across for controlling a Growatt inverter is to start talking locally to it via a cable plugged into it. It's not a difficult thing to achieve, but it is more involved.

@majordennisbloodnok I came across this by accident and I am suffering the frustrations of Growatt inverter server information.

Could you expand on what you have done in the way of connection and any other improvements in control, please?

Although I use the app occasionally, I mostly access it on my Mac through https://server.growatt.com

Let's be clear; the ShinePhone app is dreadful. It's flaky, unpolished, inconsistent and unintuitive. There's a lot of very good reasons for wanting to get away from it, so you're preaching to the converted. However, providing your API key to any third party - even a seemingly legitimate app - is something I would never do; that API key is exactly the same as providing your username and password, and you don't know enough about the app to know if it would store that key safely or even if the people behind the app are trustworthy. Only provide the key if you literally don't care if an unknown group of people access your solar PV system whenever they want and make any changes they see fit without asking you. Even though the likelihood of this actually happening is low, this is exactly what the potential risk is.

As for whether you can mess up your settings, the risk is no different to you having full access to ShinePhone. Yes, you can certainly mess things up, but then you could already.

I haven't looked into this app before, so I have no idea how much of an improvement or not it may be to ShinePhone. However, you do have to bear in mind that it still relies on the inverter talking via the wifi adapter to Growatt's systems in the first place. Any flakiness in that comms will affect ShinePhone and this app equally, and this app still won't change the frequency of updates (5 minutes, if I remember correctly). As a result, if you're going to rely on the inverter <--> Growatt communication at all, there's little to gain by simply changing from ShinePhone to something else IMHO.

I have no idea what your appetite is for technical tinkering, but the only realistic alternative I've come across for controlling a Growatt inverter is to start talking locally to it via a cable plugged into it. It's not a difficult thing to achieve, but it is more involved. The benefit, however, is that you get much better control, much quicker refreshes of data and much more stable communication. As an added bonus, if your Internet connection goes down then you still have the ability to talk to your inverter, so it's almost an essential if your setup includes an islanding option.

In short, my recommendation would be either to stay with ShinePhone and all its inadequacies or go the full hog and move to a local connection (which doesn't, incidentally, mean stopping the Internet comms in parallel).

Is capture a worthwhile addition rather than the ShinePhone one provided by Growatt.

Can I mess up my settings by using and playing around on it. It wants my API code to link and no idea if that’s a good idea, whatever that is.  

Is there a better app to manage my system or as mentioned just stick with ShinePhone