Our internet has been down for three days - internal wireless still operating.
Does the app need to connect to "Away" before it can get data direct from "Home"? I can't get it to connect to Home.
The data is sitting there a few yards away but it has to reach me via the Cloud?!
GribinIsaf I don't know the answer to your question but you my have answered it yourself.
If you are willing to have a go (assuming your inverter is wifi-connected), you could set up your phone as a hotspot and allow the inverter dongle to connect to it and therefore the internet (over your phone 4G, if you have it). The simplest way to do this would be to give your phone hotspot the same name (SSID) as your home wifi (Settings-General-About on iPhone) and the same password (you may have to temporarily switch off the home wifi if there's a channel conflict and depending on your phone, it may offer a hotspot on both 2.4GHz and GHz bandwidths, or just one but the dongle will need 2.4GHz). You can force an iPhone to offer 2.4GHz hotspot by enabling "Maximize Compatibility" in the hotspot settings.
I'm not sure how much of your data allowance the inverter would consume, but you could give it a go if you're willing to try?
Let me know if yours is a wired inverter (ie ethernet) and I'll have a ponder how you could do that.
GribinIsaf Some Internet Service Providers offer a guaranteed service whereby your broadband "fails over" to an ISP-supplied backup GSM router with a SIM data card in it. Maybe something to consider when your contract expires? Or (if you felt confident), you could buy a router with SIM card slot yourself and a data SIM and plug it in when you need it.
The historical 5 minute power and energy values are only stored in the cloud, so a live internet connection is required at all times to avoid some data loss.
As @Tim has said, on a short term basis you could configure a 4G phone as a WiFi hotspot instead of your home WiFi in order to check the inverter is doing what you expect.
Thanks for that.
Have done the hotspot trick - same SSID and password - and inverter now communicating with outside world.... and back to the app!
We do in fact have a backup GSM router ("mini-hub" from BT) which they have activated due to fibre fault. I have only just discovered how to break into the back of it, get admin password, communicate with its web interface and hence change it's SSID.
Thanks for provoking my thoughts.
As a supplementary - when inverter regains contact with the cloud does it upload all the missing backdated data?
GribinIsaf , not according to the response I got from GE support when I asked that question in the last couple of months.
I was somewhat disappointed as the MyEnergi Zappi EV chargepoint I have does exactly that, as up to a couple of days of data is buffered in the device if the internet connection is down. It takes a couple of hours once back online to retrieve all the missed data up to the cloud, but it gets there in the end.
GribinIsaf have a backup GSM router
Glad you're getting what you're paying for!