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

[hammick]

Hey guys OP here. I wanted to give an update on my batteries. Due to COVID we have been spending a lot of time at our place. Over four months so far this year. Our batteries seem fine but I have noticed what appears to be rust in the negative post cells of all eight batteries (pic attached). I have taken a plastic chop stick and I can easily clear the brown particles off the metal. The electrolyte then becomes brown and cloudy.

So are my batteries shedding stratification or does this mean I am overcharging these batteries. As I stated on the first post of this thread my batteries went nearly flat and stayed in a partial state of charge for several weeks.

Thanks for any advice.

IMG_3274.jpg

[hammick]

I sure hope your "guy" really knows what he's doing with auto start generator tweaking.

Now Mike there are some really smart people in addition to the solar experts on this forum. Nothing was tweaked. He designed, manufactured and tested his Wifi board specifically for the MEP-802A and MEP-803A generators. We wrote and tested the firmware himself. Then he tests these on a simulator for days and then tests each board in an 802A generator. Many people are using his boards and have been very happy with them. His operating and install manual is extremely detailed. The hardware used in the board is high quality.

I'm not a huge fan of AGS systems either. But I may have ruined a set of batteries and I can't have that happen again. I had him incorporate two specific safety backups into his firmware for my specific application. I do not consider my setup to be AGS as I will not have it setup to auto start. I will manually initiate the generator starts and will monitor live on a camera. If I lose internet there is a fail safe timer built in to shut off the generator. All the genset's switches remain in the off position so if the board freezes or restarts the genset shuts down.

If you have a spare 29 minutes you can see it in detail here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUjL6mldAEM&t=1326s

[Mike90250]

....
......The guy who makes the wifi AGS board added a few custom features to the firmware for my specific application.........

I sure hope your "guy" really knows what he's doing with auto start generator tweaking. So many ways for this to go wrong and firmware to behave in unexpected ways. I really hate AGS systems because of the "set and forget" issues and the fire danger if there is ever a problem with the genset..

[hammick]

Yes you can RDP without a SSH connection (I mentioned it previously) but *with* a VPN.

Also, have you programmed your AGS correctly so it starts the generator itself when the batteries are low (look at System Devices > AGS > Settings > Triggers). You always also need to factor in voltage sag with those settings.

Since my genset is installed in my garage and exhausted out an exterior wall through a thimble I don't want it starting on it's own. I'll be using an AGS wifi board that will install directly on the genset. The AGS board also has a two wire interface that can be connected to the Conext AGS or just a simple contact switch. So I'll be able to start/stop, monitor and configure the genset via wifi by logging in with Teamviewer. I will also configure the two wire interface to an Insteon I/O switch as a backup in case I cannot log into Teamviewer for any reason.

The guy who makes the wifi AGS board added a few custom features to the firmware for my specific application. I have the ability to set the amount of time the genset runs before it shuts off. So if I lose my connection for any reason the genset will shut itself down after the set amount of time. I will also have one of my Blink cameras looking at the genset so I can live view it periodically while it is running. I typically don't run the genset for more than 30 minutes at a time even in the winter. It's highly unlikely that I will ever have to remote start it during the summer or early fall when fire season may be in full swing.

PIC of the Wifi board main page attached:

IMG_2361.jpg

[extrafu]

Yes you can RDP without a SSH connection (I mentioned it previously) but *with* a VPN.

Also, have you programmed your AGS correctly so it starts the generator itself when the batteries are low (look at System Devices > AGS > Settings > Triggers). You always also need to factor in voltage sag with those settings.

[hammick]

If TeamViewer goes ape-**** on the Mini PC, you won't be able to use MS Remote Desktop from home to your Mini PC. You *will need* a VPN tunnel for this, since your Hughesnet modem port-blocks every incoming connections / doesn't do port forwarding.

OK. Makes sense. If I have an OpenVPN connection (Client on Hughesnet router/Mini PC network) can I RPD into the Mini PC without an SSH connection?

I'm coming into that time of year where snow covering the panels won't be an issue. I'll have time to get this all sorted out including a second way to remote start/stop my genset using the two wire interface of my AGS board connected to an Insteon on/off module. The Insteon stuff has been 100% reliable connected to the Hughesnet router as has the Blink XT2 camera equipment.

[extrafu]

If TeamViewer goes ape-**** on the Mini PC, you won't be able to use MS Remote Desktop from home to your Mini PC. You *will need* a VPN tunnel for this, since your Hughesnet modem port-blocks every incoming connections / doesn't do port forwarding.

[hammick]

Beware about TeamViewer. I used the free version to maintain my dad's computer remotely for 3 years. Till they decided I was using it commercially and limited my free sessions to 5 minutes long, with a 30 min forced idle

Thanks for the heads up. I will be on Mini PC that has nothing else installed on it. Sole function of the PC will be for accessing the combox and starting my generator. I can always install a DynamicDNS updater and use the built in MS Remote Desktop if they lock me out. What I like about Teamviewer is how simple and secure it is. I've spent way too much time trying to figure out the best way to go about accessing my system with my crappy Hughesnet.

[Mike90250]

Beware about TeamViewer. I used the free version to maintain my dad's computer remotely for 3 years. Till they decided I was using it commercially and limited my free sessions to 5 minutes long, with a 30 min forced idle

[hammick]

I've used both and they were just fine over a satellite connection. We first started with the idea that the WiFi router where the ComBox is connected would run Openwrt (like me) but if you don't end up doing that and you prefer having a Windows PC acting as a VPN client, it's better that you either use RDP instead of SSH's port redirection OR you use TeamViewer.

The advantage of running Openwrt on the WiFi router is that it'll consume less electricity than a Windows laptop - which might also crash, freeze, go to sleep or die for running 24/7 non-stop.

I've decided to go the Teamviewer route. I bought a Mini PC that only has a 2.5 amp power supply. I bet it uses less than an amp when idle. Teamviewer is very secure and does everything I need. This cheap little PC allows ethernet connections and wifi at the same time. The Wifi AGS board that I'm installing on my MEP-802a genset is a direct wifi connection. So with Teamviewer I will be able to see both the combox and the AGS. I can turn off the wifi before I sign off of Teamviewer to use less power. The wifi board runs off the gensets batteries which are charged by a solar tender so no power use there.

So I won't use SSH but I still want to figure it out. I discovered that I can ping the IPs on the local network from within Powershell but can't ping them with a command prompt. So that's why I couldn't log into the router AP in my test setup. Makes no sense to me.

Thanks for all the help Extrafu!

[extrafu]

I've used both and they were just fine over a satellite connection. We first started with the idea that the WiFi router where the ComBox is connected would run Openwrt (like me) but if you don't end up doing that and you prefer having a Windows PC acting as a VPN client, it's better that you either use RDP instead of SSH's port redirection OR you use TeamViewer.

The advantage of running Openwrt on the WiFi router is that it'll consume less electricity than a Windows laptop - which might also crash, freeze, go to sleep or die for running 24/7 non-stop.

[hammick]

Extrafu have you tried RDP or Teamviewer using Hughesnet? I'm wondering weather the latency is unbearable.

[hammick]

If your OpenVPN client is running on Windoze, you might just as well use RDP and avoid SSH entirely.

OK. I might do that but I have spent so much time on this that I can't quit. I successfully made an SSH connection through the OpenVPN tunnel tonight. The OpenVPN Windows 10 Client/SSH Server was connected to the the Asus router OpenVPN sever using my Verizon Iphone for Internet. I had a different router connected to the Win 10 machine in AP mode to simulate the Combox. After making the SSH connection I could Ping both the Win 10 IP (192.168.1.160) and the AP router simulating the Combox (192.168.1.165). The LAN IP of the OpenVPN Server router is 192.168.1.100. Even though I could ping the test AP I could not get it to come up putting it's IP into Chrome or IE browsers. I tried 192.168.1.165:22 in Chrome and initially got an unsafe port error. I then told Chrome to allow port 22 and after that I got a timed out error.

The OpenVPN Client/SSH server machine has all of it's firewalls disabled. I'll probably use Teamviewer RDP which also has built in VPN but I've spent so much time on this I need to figure it out for piece of mind.

Thanks all your help and if you have any ideas please let me know.

[extrafu]

If your OpenVPN client is running on Windoze, you might just as well use RDP and avoid SSH entirely.

[hammick]

Etrafu I have give up on running OpenVPN client on a router. I've tried OpenVPN client on a Win 10 PC and it works great. So for the SSH part I need to install SSH Sever on the OpenVPN client machine, right? And I'll use a windows machine connected to the OpenVPN server router for the SSH client?

UPDATE: I just installed SSH Sever using powershell on to a Windows 10 Pro machine.