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Quickstart

Ready to get started? Run these commands:

If you're using Windows, check this out!

Run this to quickly get setup (Linux Only):

# This clones this repository in /opt, then creates a user and group named solarthing, then updates the ownership of the cloned repository
# This does NOT configure other random files on your system
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wildmountainfarms/solarthing/master/other/linux/clone_install.sh | sudo bash
# If when testing the program, it helps to have permission to edit files owned by the solarthing group, and you will also want to be allowed to use serial ports
sudo usermod -a -G solarthing,dialout,tty,video $USER

Or if you want to check out how the simple installation works: click here

It is also recommended to make sure your timezone is correct. To check the time on your system, run date. If it is incorrect and you are using a Raspberry Pi, you can run sudo raspi-config to change it.

If you don't have Java installed, click here.

Edit Configurations

Now SolarThing is installed, all you have to do is edit configurations in /opt/solarthing/program/<mate|rover|graphql|pvoutput>/config.

# Navigate to your program's directory
cd /opt/solarthing/program/<mate|rover|graphql|pvoutput>

NOTE: In each program, paths are relative to their respective directory.
For instance if you are running the rover program, paths will be relative to program/rover.

Program Specific Configuration

You will have to adjust the configuration to your needs and based on the type of program you want to run.

Mate Quickstart - Monitors Outback Mate1/2 devices

Rover Quickstart - Monitors Renogy Rover and other supported products

PVOutput Quickstart - uploads to PVOutput (requires CouchDB and Mate or Rover program)

Message Quickstart - Slack or Mattermost bot for notifications (requires CouchDB and Mate or Rover program)

Request Quickstart - Upload temperature sensor data

GraphQL Quickstart - Expose CouchDB as a GraphQL API (used for Grafana)

Configuration Continued

Also learn about analytics data we collect. Now you have started to configure your base.json file, decide what databases you want to use below. Also, note that you can choose to use none of them if you just want to get data before going further.

Need help choosing a database?

CouchDB "Database"

cp ../../config_templates/databases/couchdb_template.json config/couchdb.json
# Edit it with your editor of choice

InfluxDB "Database"

cp ../../config_templates/databases/influxdb_template.json config/influxdb.json
# Edit it with your editor of choice

Latest "Database"

NOTE: This is not recommended on Raspberry Pi devices because there will be many writes to the disk. Also, this data isn't very useful by itself since there's nothing that uses it. This can be a good way to debug.

cp ../../config_templates/databases/latest_save_json_template.json config/latest.json
# Edit it with your editor of choice

Add databases to base configuration

Edit config/base.json with your editor of choice

{
  //...
  "databases": [
    "config/couchdb.json",
    "config/influxdb.json"
  ]
}

You can use 0 or all of the available databases. If you are just testing and don't want to setup a database, you don't have to!

Note that if you decided to put them in the program/config, your databases will look like this:

{
  //...
  "databases": [
    "../config/couchdb.json",
    "../config/influxdb.json",
    "../config/latest.json"
  ]
}

Running for the first time

Once you have your configuration the way you want it, it's time for a test run. Run this command:

# Using 'sudo' may be required depending on how you set it up
./run.sh

Note that you can also do this:

./run.sh config/base.json # you can specify your base config if you want

If you got an error, you can look at this (hopefully) helpful debug errors page.

Running in the long run

If your Linux distro uses systemd, you can go here to learn how to install the service. Then run these commands.

sudo systemctl enable solarthing-<program type> # Run on boot
sudo systemctl start solarthing-<program type> # Start the service now

Run Without systemd service

There are many platforms that don't have systemd: Mac, Windows, and plenty of different Linux Distros.

Right now I am not officially supporting these other options, but SolarThing should run just fine on them with some additional setup. If you want to suggest an additional platform to support, let us know on our issues page.