DIY NMEA2000 compatible Battery Monitor using SensESP/ESP32 - Part 2 - Tech E13 - Après Sail

[@thewaveringwarrior]

What software are you using to code the ESP32? I use Arduino IDE but you not saying what you use?

[@ApresSail]

Sorry, I am using the instructions for SensESP which suggest using Visual Studio Code with the PlatformIO extension

[@DonLKSAB]

Hi. Tanks for two super nice videos. I have one question. How do i connect it to the NMEA 2000 network? Do i need to run it through a Raspberry in some way?

[@ApresSail]

At 13mins 52 seconds in the video you see I talk about Nautical Sun's battery monitor and notice there is a CAN transceiver on that board. CAN Hi (Net-Hi) and CAN Lo (Net-Lo) would be connected to the NMEA2000 data lines and the 12V (Net-S) and 0V(Net-C) could be used to power this device - see github.com/Techstyleuk/SensESP-NMEA2000-Battery-Monitor for the schematic. You do not need a Raspberry Pi. Just another note - the Transceiver includes a terminating resistor that you should remove (or take off one of the terminators from your NMEA2000 network)

[@DonLKSAB]

@@ApresSail Hi again. Im building :-) The terminating resistor. Is that the one located by the Jumper pins?

[@ApresSail]

@@DonLKSAB yes

[@DonLKSAB]

Geting closer. All im waiting for now is the Shunt. But everything else is connected and installed. But i dont think it works 100%. First there is NO LEDS flashing or anything when i power it from the Buck converter. Is that correct? Wifi seems to be correct. The first time i connect it gives me a wifi to connect to and set up my own wifi. After that the wifi connects to th erouter for a few seconds then dies. Correct? (This is when connected to the PC so i can see whats happening. And i get alot of errors. Not sure they are an issue but when i connect it to a real shunt? WHen i connect it to the NMEA2000 backbone i get no new info. It feels like i should at least get NMEA info but no values?

[@ApresSail]

@@DonLKSAB can you describe your setup? do you just have a NMEA2000 system or do you have a signal K server as well? do you have 2 INA219 boards connected? are they addressed correctly? Are you using a firebeetle 2? I think we see a Green and red Led.

[@davidbarrett7424]

Found you through Boating with the Baileys :-) I think you're asking how to set / store the manually inputted data you list in your video description (e.g. Battery capacity). I've been looking at similar for WiFi SSID & password for my project. That is done with ESPWiFiManager (which looks to be built in to SensESP). kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJ_JiWyPf8eUi5o shows ESPWiFiManager allows you to add custom parameters to the WiFi set up screen and store them to SPIFFS in JSON format. Hope that helps / isn't barking up the wrong tree, and thanks for the video.

[@ApresSail]

@davidbarrett7424, thanks for coming over from BwtB! and thanks for the help, I will take a look at that, see if it helps. Specifically, I was talking about the SensESP App and trying to set up variables that are modifiable in the SensESP App. SO far, it appears to me that these have to start off as some sort of function, like: float variable_callback() {return (1);} and then use something else to manipulate this: auto* New_Variable = new RepeatSensor(1000, variable_callback); and then: New_Variable->connect_to(new Linear(1.0, 0.0, "/Specify the/Variable in the APP")) ->connect_to(new LambdaConsumer([](float Variable) { Variable_New = Variable; })); Seems long winded.... so I am looking for a better way.