App losing local connection when screen closes

GivEnergy Products GivEnergy Mobile App
1

I’ve just got a GivEnergy 5kW hybrid + 9.5kWh battery + 6.75kW of panels.

I’ve noticed that when using the app locally and letting the screen time out or navigating to a different application, on coming back to the app it has lost the local connection and won’t regain it. This doesn’t happen all the time and perhaps the longer I leave it the more chance there is of losing the connection.

If I then close the app down and re-open it, local connection starts up again.

I’m running on an Android phone (Android 10 Galaxy 9+). I have also tried on another phone (Miui Redmi Note 9 with Android 10) and that has the same issue. And there’s more - If one phone loses it the other does too, but if one is working, so is the other one. And to get either working again I have to close BOTH app and then restart them.

This is all from my limited playing around with the apps so it may not be totally accurate!

Any solution?

2

Two things you ought to do:

1, On your router, set the inverter (it appears usually a HF-21 or something like that) to a fixed IP address
2, In the app, go to settings, local monitoring, search for router, then when it finds it click the tick button to save the IP address.

That way the app doesn’t have to search for the inverter address each time it starts, and the address won’t change

1 Like
3

Thanks, but I’d already done exactly both those things.

Now I look at the Cloud portal, I can see that the Inverter cloud didn’t get/record any data between 13:10 and 15:00 today then between 16:35 and 17:15. But I guess that’s a different issue.

The Inverter connects to my router over Ethernet through at least one switch.

4

Thanks @geoffrey - had no idea that giving the AIO a static IP would speed up the app finding it. Have done that now.

1 Like
5

Well now local mode won’t even work if I kill the App and restart it.

I think it fell over when, after a break of a few days, I tried once more with the GivTCP Add-On in Home Assistant. That fell over after about 3 minutes!

I have a project of displaying the current power in my window and the 5 minute cycle of GE-Cloud just doesn’t cut it, so I really want to get this all working properly.

6

it does sound like problems with your inverter firmware if neither the app nor givtcp work reliably

have you tried the BBC basic ‘inverter’ app (iOS/android or any platform you can run bbc basic) or the RubikCube Android inverter app?

7

Yes, both of them. GivEnergy need to sort it.

It also stopped sending updates to the cloud a couple of hours ago. A local re-set through its web interface didn’t fix it but a power down/up did.

I tried an iOS app, but never got it to work. I don’t really want to explore BBC Basic - too many rabbit holes in Home Assistant as it is!

I’m going to lay off GivTCP for a few more days, unless someone has another suggestion.

Thanks

8

The BBC basic app is a normal iOS or Android app, it’s just been written in BBC basic.

Search for ‘inverter’ on the app store

image
image1640×2360 204 KB

it communicates via modbus to your inverter, you just enter the IP address(s) when you run the app

it might work, it might not if the issue is the inverter modbus firmware

9

I did find that in the iOS store and loaded it onto an old iPhone 6 I have lying around. I think I entered the IP but it never connected. Now when I run it, it doesn’t ask me for the IP and I can’t see how to check/change the IP.

On Android, I couldn’t see it but found a different one written for GivEnergy Inverters. That connected straight away with the IP. It polls every 10s and sometimes reports an error but carries on. Sometimes when it errors, it never recovers. Closing and restarting the app gets it going again. I’ve not run it for long but right now after 10 minutes it’s reporting 14 errors out of 68 polls.

image
image1080×2220 96.7 KB

I’d say similar behavior to the official app.

On the Facebook group, someone has suggested I might have a new/latest Dongle!

10

that’s the RubikCube Android app, (if working) you can use it to control multiple charging schedules and see your battery cell health, which you can’t do in the givenergy app

does rather sound like its firmware or dongle firmware related. Unfortunately need givenergy to resolve or advise what the fix is

11

If you go into the settings of the Android Monitor for GivEnergy Inverter app and scroll down - you can set the Persistent option to on. The app should then connect and stay connected permanently to your inverter. You can also turn on the Collect Stats option it will request data from the inverter regularly. It’s best to do this on a phone or tablet that you can leave at home with a mains connection. For a one off fee off £10 you can also use the app to control your inverter. It can also display any errors that that the inverter encounters.

1 Like