Right now I’m using Node-Red on a server to interact with my IOT infrastructure. But after some recent bother with a battery, I decided to look closer into Node-RED on the Venus itself, with a view to improving the notifications I’ll be getting about alarms.
After updating to the latest firmware (today that’s 3.72), I logged into the Node-Red interface and began to marvel at what was there.
Naturally my first instinct was to whack an MQTT out node on it to talk to the local broker. This is when I noticed an odd thing.
A large number of the nodes won’t let me select my hardware, and of those that do, a large number simply return null payloads. I have searched in vain for help, but without success.
Thankfully modbus continues to function well, it’s simply that Node-Red is easier to use.
Can anyone help my understanding of what’s happening?
I would, for example, like to monitor alarm states, so I can use them as triggers in other systems.
If I add a Battery Monitor node, the node correctly identifies my battery (Freedom Lite), and gives me a list of available data I can pull, which includes the alarms I want. However, they always return a payload of null.
In the interim, I found that I can get much of the same data choosing the Solar Charger node, which can pull an error state. More than adequate for my needs, I’m just confused about why some nodes report null.
My current hypothesis is that when a node returns null, I either don’t own the hardware being referenced, or else it’s managed elsewhere. For example, if the MPTT is managing the battery, perhaps the battery doesn’t report values. This is what I’m assuming.
