Problem Statement

Commercial solar equipment is increasingly locked down by artificial software barriers: hybrid inverters requiring mandatory account creation on remote corporate cloud servers that brick during internet outages, battery packs with obfuscated communications that forbid user repair, and ad-infested mobile apps. Furthermore, the Balkan regional market is plagued by counterfeit Grade-B LiFePO4 cells relabeled as Grade-A and solar modules with inflated power ratings. This sprout unites an open alliance of hackerspaces, electrical engineers, and solar installers to engineer open-hardware alternatives, reverse-engineer proprietary protocols, and conduct rigorous, independent lab testing.

Open Hardware Bill of Materials (BOM Hints)

  • Open EDA Circuit Repository (KiCad): Public repositories hosting CERN-OHL v2 licensed schematics for DIY MPPT charge controllers, active flying-capacitor cell balancers, and smart DIN-rail DC disconnects.
  • Protocol Sniffing Rig: USB-to-CAN bus adapters (Candlelight / Waveshare) and galvanically isolated USB-to-RS485 converters featuring authentic FTDI chipsets, paired with open digital logic analyzers (Sigrok / PulseView).
  • Battery Testing Workstation: EBC-A40L high-precision battery capacity tester (up to 40A discharge current with 4-wire Kelvin sense leads), YR1035+ AC milliohm meter ($1\text{ kHz}$ test signal for internal resistance), and a FLIR thermal camera.
  • Open Hardware Inverter Gateway: Dedicated ESP32 board interfacing directly with inverter Modbus/RS485 service ports, permanently replacing proprietary cloud-dependent Wi-Fi dongles.

Schematics & Experiment Notes

  1. Inverter Protocol Reverse-Engineering: Decoded register tables for prevalent regional hybrid inverters (Deye, Growatt, Easun, Must, Victron VE.Direct). Yields 100% local, offline telemetry for voltages, currents, power flows, and battery state-of-charge directly into Home Assistant via MQTT.
  2. Independent LiFePO4 Torture Benchmarking: Conducting standardized 0.5C charge/discharge lifecycle tests on prismatic cells purchased from regional vendors. Actual capacity curves (Ah), DC internal resistance ($R_{\text{int}}$), and thermal degradation plots are published to a public Git repository, exposing fraudulent supplier specs.
  3. Standardized DIY Mounting Hardware: Open-source FreeCAD parametric models and DXF vector files for structural aluminum and galvanized steel racking tailored for flat roofs, pitched tiles, and balcony railings, cut locally on CNC sheet-metal lasers.

Call for Contribution (How to Join)

  • Protocol Reverse-Engineers: Assist with logging and decoding unknown CAN bus frames and handshake packets from new inverter models and commercial BMS modules.
  • Hardware Designers: Contribute modular KiCad schematics for solid-state DC contactors, high-current shunt monitors, and open BMS controller designs.
  • Solar Installers & Regional Labs: Send suspect cells and gear to our test bench and share field-failure reports in our open collaborative knowledge base.