I messed up: Need advice on bringing Trojan L16s back from near dead

[SunEagle]

That has happened to me, being more into correcting errors than able to get it right the first
time. It is PRETTY ANNOYING having to wait a day, when there were no links. Bruce Roe

That is why the forum has the Moderators who are happy to approve posts that have gone to moderation.

[Mike90250]

Yes, one time spammers post something "ok" and after a day when it's approved and forgotten about, they come and post their spam over the formerly good post.

[hammick]

Yes, if the VPN gets disconnected or say the WiFi router reboots, everything will get re-established without a hiccup.

Thanks. I can't believe I didn't think of asking this until now. What kind of data does your VPN connection use when it is idle? I got so caught up in this I forgot about my measly 10gb per month of data. Does it work reliably after your data is throttled for the month? Only thing I will use it for is monitoring/configuring the Combox and hopefully my Wifi genset AGS.

Oh and back to the original topic. Today marks two weeks that my batteries have been in a partial state of charge. My neighbor finally got up there yesterday on snowmobile and shut off my inverter. I think one or more of my breakers in my combiner box may have tripped. Yesterday I was charging pretty slow and there was good sun. I've never tripped a breaker in close to five years of doing this but I guess very cold weather combined with sun reflecting off the snow could do it.

[Mike90250]

Well, after a couple days of Absorb, you should be ready to run an EQ cycle. Any chance the neighbor can check the combiner breakers ? I've had mine trip on occasion from edge of cloud and such.

[extrafu]

No worry about bandwidth consumption - we're talking about bytes here!

Look (attached screenshot) at what my 2 arrays (2 x 12 280W panels) were producing today (cold + sunny). Pretty impressive! The panels in the south array were producing 361W and the south-east were producing 329W - not bad for 280W panels!

[hammick]

Well, after a couple days of Absorb, you should be ready to run an EQ cycle. Any chance the neighbor can check the combiner breakers ? I've had mine trip on occasion from edge of cloud and such.

Can partial snow cover on panels mimic an edge of cloud event?

No dice on her checking the breakers. I need a full ladder to get to them even though I had the box installed inside. She was scared to death to snowmobile up to my place. She is new to it and is constantly falling over and getting it stuck. We are at the base of the mountains and our grade is quite a bit steeper than them even though just under a mile away. There were three guys on sleds at a nearby log house that is being built (they must be on a deadline contract). She asked if one of them would follow her up. All three did.

I may ask her to initiate an EQ charge after the snow melts. Right now there is so much snow when the wind blows it's like a blizzard even though it isn't snowing. It keeps drifting bad I'm told. According to the local paper it's the biggest snow season for our county since 1953.

[Mike90250]

You have to complete the Absorb at least once before an EQ will start. The logic on your controller may let you start an EQ, but on mine, it only starts counting the EQ after the absorb finishes. In winter, short days, it may not work at all. Wait for a couple full charges to get the batteries full, and then try an EQ.

Any chance someone can start the genset at sunrise, and have bulk completed by 9am when your panels should be able to take over Absorb for 3 hours, and start the EQ at noon ? That's really about the only way to EQ in winter.

And battery water, After an absorb, check the levels, and *nearly* top them off. The heat in the EQ cycle will expand the electrolyte volume and they may overflow.

[hammick]

You have to complete the Absorb at least once before an EQ will start. The logic on your controller may let you start an EQ, but on mine, it only starts counting the EQ after the absorb finishes. In winter, short days, it may not work at all. Wait for a couple full charges to get the batteries full, and then try an EQ.

Any chance someone can start the genset at sunrise, and have bulk completed by 9am when your panels should be able to take over Absorb for 3 hours, and start the EQ at noon ? That's really about the only way to EQ in winter.

And battery water, After an absorb, check the levels, and *nearly* top them off. The heat in the EQ cycle will expand the electrolyte volume and they may overflow.

My MPPT150-60 is the same. EQ won't start until batteries are in float. No chance of getting the genset started until I get up there. I was lucky to get my inverter shut off.

I can EQ in winter on a very sunny day if I get the batteries fully charged by noon. But in the winter I mostly use the genset for EQs.

[hammick]

Yes, if the VPN gets disconnected or say the WiFi router reboots, everything will get re-established without a hiccup.

Hey Extrafu I have successfully set up Open VPN server on an ASUS RT-N66R and the Open VPN Client on another RT-N66R. Everything connects the way it should and I can access devices connected to both. Of course this testing was done at my main home with Google Fiber internet. I am using NoIP.com for dynamic DNS on the Google Router and the Open VPN server. I'm also able to connect to the Open VPN server over Verizon LTE using the OpenVPN Iphone app.

Any pointers you can give me on the Hughesnet end? I'm hoping to be at our place on March 8th. My wife is going with me so nobody will be at home on the Server side to see if they can access the Combox. Maybe I'll set up Teamviewer on a PC at the server house so I can see if the Combox is accessible.

Are there any ports I need to forward on the Hughesnet router/modem?

Thanks for all your help. It took me a lot of time to get this working but I have learned a lot.

[extrafu]

On the Hughesnet's end - you will also need a WiFi router with Openwrt on it and set up OpenVPN as a *client* to connect to your home server. There's no ports to forward on the Hughesnet router - in fact if you could do that (but you can't unless you pay big bucks per month to Hughesnet), there would be no need for the VPN tunnel.

[hammick]

On the Hughesnet's end - you will also need a WiFi router with Openwrt on it and set up OpenVPN as a *client* to connect to your home server. There's no ports to forward on the Hughesnet router - in fact if you could do that (but you can't unless you pay big bucks per month to Hughesnet), there would be no need for the VPN tunnel.

Thanks. I have the Hughesnet "client" router all set up and it's successfully connected to my "server" router using an OpenVPN "Tun" connection. My testing is being done at our main home using our Google Fiber internet. I won't be able to install the "client" router at our Hughesnet place for a couple weeks.

My testing has shown that the client router can see and ping the server router LAN IP. But the server router cannot see or ping the client router's LAN IP. I'm assuming this is normal and that is why you need to SSH back through the tunnel.

So when you SSH back through the OpenVPN tunnel what are you connecting to? The client router or a computer connected to the client router? My eyes start twitching when I read about SSH.

Routing may be easier for me but I don't know how to do that either. There is a routing option under the Asus router's LAN setting page.

Thanks for any help you can give me. I'm clueless at this point.

[extrafu]

You connect to the client's router - where the VPN client installed.

Say your client's router's VPN IP address is 172.21.0.6. Say your Conext ComBox's IP address is 192.168.1.104, from your home where your VPN server is, you would have a SSH config similar to this:

Host remotehomewherecomboxis
User root
Compression yes
hostname 172.21.0.6
proxycommand ssh -q root@greg nc -q0 %h 22
localforward 2020 192.168.1.104:80

Then, from your home, you ssh to remotehomewherecomboxis and once the tunnel is established, you open on your web browser:

http://127.0.0.1:2020/

and you'll land on the ComBox's login page.

[hammick]

You connect to the client's router - where the VPN client installed.

Say your client's router's VPN IP address is 172.21.0.6. Say your Conext ComBox's IP address is 192.168.1.104, from your home where your VPN server is, you would have a SSH config similar to this:

Host remotehomewherecomboxis
User root
Compression yes
hostname 172.21.0.6
proxycommand ssh -q root@greg nc -q0 %h 22
localforward 2020 192.168.1.104:80

Then, from your home, you ssh to remotehomewherecomboxis and once the tunnel is established, you open on your web browser:

http://127.0.0.1:2020/

and you'll land on the ComBox's login page.

Thanks. That is very helpful. I'm assuming learning how to SSH is going to be a lot easier than figuring out routing? Are you using "TUN" or "TAP" for your OpenVPN?

[hammick]

Extrafu another question if you don't mind. Do I need to enable SSH on the Client router in the administrative settings or is it built in the OpenVPN part of the router?

Is this part of the config (proxycommand ssh -q root@greg nc -q0 %h 22) where my particular login info goes?

[extrafu]

You need to have a SSH server on the router behind the Hughes satellite modem - where the OpenVPN client is installed. You also need to have a shell account on that router. If you have Openwrt, by default you have a root (username) / admin (password) account.

Regarding the SSH config, it'll ask for your root's password. I used root as a sample username - it can be anything you want, not necessarily a privileged user. It'll ask you for a password unless you use key authentication.