Tag: Personal

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Does privacy really exist?

The other day my wife and I were talking about the Live scan requirement for AB 506 that I’ll have to do as I’m a Scout leader even though I have been live scanned before to renew my EMT certification once. Live scan is done on a per organization/company basis and is a snapshot in time making it somewhat pointless in my opinion.

My wife suggested that the live scan results aren’t shared because of privacy concerns which got me thinking about how much privacy most people can have in today’s society.

Whether you like it or not, you’re being tracked by the government and various companies. For instance, every time you use a credit card, the date/time, location, and name of the vendor is tracked by the credit card company. While it may be to help prevent fraud, they can build a pretty detailed picture of you just based on your buying habits. Likewise if you have a club card at a super market or shop at Costco, you can bet the data is being used to target you for ads.

Many people don’t realize that they’ve accepted this "invasion" of privacy as they have to sacrifice it for convenience. In addition to your shopping habits, if you own your house it does not take much to figure out where you live.

Let’s get into the more subtle ways you’re being tracked. I just read an article the other day how many law enforcement agencies in San Diego county are using License Plate Readers (LPR) which can give law enforcement a decent idea of your driving habits if you happen to pass by the readers (some are on police cars and others may be stationary). LPR is not just used by law enforcement. The University Town Center mall uses LPR in its parking garages so you can exit without having to insert your ticket in the machine. If you frequent the mall, your habits are being tracked.

If you think that your ad blocker and turning off location services on your cell phone prevent you from being tracked, you’re mistaken. Cell phone companies can know which cell towers your phone hits as it is required in order to route calls to you. Do they keep that data and do something with it? I have no idea, but it is quite possible and not just some made up stuff seen in TV shows.

Do you have a car with "connected services" in it? You’re being tracked. While you can ask the company to turn off all services, you lose the ability to have collision notification, vehicle theft recovery and some other features. In order to have the convenience and safety of these features, your location is being tracked. I have no idea what the car manufacturers are doing with this data, but they’re collecting it. Even if you don’t subscribe to the services and don’t explicitly opt-out, they still may collect the data as the cost to keep a live cellular connection in your car is minor compared to what they can do with your data.

Don’t forget about your Netflix or Amazon Prime history. When and where you watch a show along with what the show is can be valuable data that forms a picture of who you are and what you do.

Is there anything you can do about staying private? I suppose you could always pay cash, stop using a cell phone, drive a car without connected services (or rip out the cellular connection), avoid all places with LPR, etc. Is this practical, not really? Does this mean you should just give up on privacy? I don’t think so, but you have to be realistic on what you can control and how much will it inconvenience you.

Personally I’m not going to change my habits, but I am very cognizant of what I post, when I post it (posting stuff on vacation could give a clue that I’m away from home), and how much I share. That’s really all I can do without wearing a tin foil hat and living off the grid.

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Dreading the trip to the mall (it turned out fine)

One of the malls in San Diego is University Towne Center. It has always been my least favorite mall because the traffic around it is horrendous. I hadn’t been there in years even prior to the pandemic. A few years ago, I had read that the whole mall was under construction and they added a major parking garage (there was a small parking structure in addition to lots of surface parking before) which made me want to go there even less. In addition, they started charging for parking. Last week when I was looking to get a MacBook Air, I didn’t want to have it shipped as it would have arrived when we weren’t home and the other close Apple Store didn’t have it, so I decided to brave the mall and goto UTC. I read that the first two hours of parking were free, so that was good.

I drove to UTC using a sightly less traveled route and was kind of lost as I approached it as there is still a lot of construction for the trolley extension. Traffic was light (it was a weekday around lunchtime), so it wasn’t bad getting there. I turned into the parking garage and was overwhelmed at its size; the entrance was very wide open and spanned two stories. I got my ticket and followed some signs to Nordstrom since I really had no idea where the Apple Store was located. As I proceeded, I saw signs that indicated how many empty spaces down each section. In the past I’ve thought that they were kind of made up. Once I started going down an aisle, I realized that the numbers were completely accurate; overhead down the center of each aisle was a small sign that had a red or green indicator on each side showing me which spot was occupied. This made finding a space super easy. I parked, recorded the section I was in on my ticket as I had no idea where I was going, followed the painted walkways to the stores, and then went up 2 flights of stairs.

The digital map said to use at your own discretion, so I pulled out my phone and looked for the Apple Store. I had managed to park relatively close, so it was a short walk. I stood in line outside for less than a minute, showed my barcode, had my temperature checked (yeah, I know this is a waste) and then was told to wait on one of the black dots near the window inside the store. Someone brought out my computer, checked my ID and I was on my way.

Getting back to my car was easy and exiting the garage was another painless activity. When I got to the gate to leave, I tried to stuff the ticket in the machine, but it wouldn’t go and the gate opened. I think it read the barcode and opened without me having to put it in. This particular exit was on a street that had less traffic, so I was on my way. I think my total time from leaving my house to returning was less than hour with about 25 minutes of that being driving time.

The experience was so pleasant, I might consider going back to the mall in the future!

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Two Years of Daily Meditation

For the last 2 years, I’ve made an effort to spend about 10 minutes a day meditating. I’ve been using the Calm app listening and following the "daily calm". I tried other meditation apps, but have settled on Calm because I usually get a new guided meditation every day (there have been a number of repeats over the course of 2 years). Repetition in other apps was boring and made it very hard to keep meditating every day.

While 10 minutes a day is not a lot for those that have done meditation for a long time, it is a good start for me and I’ve managed to take the few minutes a day out of my schedule to just sit. As someone that finds it hard to sit still and do nothing, I consider this a huge accomplishment.

My day is not complete without my daily Calm and I hope that doing this is starting to change me for the better. Is it working? Sometimes.

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Think Globally, Act Locally

Think Globally, Act Locally

More than 30 years ago, I took a tour of the Boston Globe as part of my high school graphic arts class. During the tour, they showed us the printing presses that were idle and hadn’t been cleaned yet after the prior night’s run. I asked what happened to all the paper still in the presses. I was told that they just threw away all the paper. Looking back on this answer, I believe it may have been incorrect, but it started me thinking about how much we waste (paper in particular). I decided to start a paper recycling program as my Eagle Scout project at my high school as a way to help reduce waste.

I became very involved in recycling efforts and joined my town’s recycling committee. My interest in recycling was probably the start of me thinking about the slogan "think globally, act locally". This slogan, of course, wasn’t new at the time, but was very on point as my recycling program wasn’t going to change the world, but it was a small part that I could to do help and if there were other like minded people, we collectively could do great things.

Recycling of paper products is now common place and people don’t think about it much. While I definitely didn’t make this happen globally, I’d like to think that I helped educate thousands of people through my efforts.

In my adult life, I’ve tried to keep following the act locally mantra by volunteering and by donating money. I know I’m not going to change the lives of millions of people and my name probably won’t be known by many people, but that doesn’t matter as long as I can make an impact on a few.

Now more than ever, I think the "think globally, act locally" slogan is important. While we as individuals can’t make COVID-19 go away, small acts such as wearing masks, staying home, and physically distancing can make a huge difference if we all followed the guidelines. When safe vaccines become available, getting one is another way to make a difference. It isn’t necessarily about protecting you from COVID-19, but also about protecting others. There are certain people that can’t get vaccines and we, as a society, need to do our best to protect them.

Some of the guidelines that we’re being asked to follow may be inconvenient, but we’re all in this together. I don’t think there are any excuses to not following the guidelines; some people are selfish and believe it is all about them and other people are not science literate to understand why we have been asked to do certain things. I am fortunate that I can financially ride this out; if everyone had followed the guidelines 6-9 months ago, we may not be where we are today with the increasing numbers and with so many people hit financially.

I urge people to do their part now and when we get through this pandemic about acting locally so that we can all help make the world a better place.

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How would I evacuate in an emergency?

This year has brought more reasons to prepare for an emergency and has gotten me asking myself if I am ready. When we had the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, I worked with my son on preparing our emergency kit as he was working on his Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge. This was a good start, but was more geared towards what to do when we didn’t have access to supplies or food. We didn’t think much about evacuations until the fires in Northern California started.

Several years ago, I wrote about preparing for an emergency. This was a start for what we’d need to take if we had to evacuate our house. Looking at the people leaving their homes in Santa Cruz and not being able to return for potentially weeks, having digital copies of things is only part of the solution.

How else can we prepare in case of an evacuation? Thinking about this, I realized that we have camping gear that is readily accessible. This includes tents, sleeping bags, ground clothes, flashlights, camping stove, etc. If we grabbed all this as we were leaving, we’d have a lot of gear needed to survive outside of our house. Clothing is one area that I will say that we’re not that organized for an evacuation. We do have duffel bags under the bed, so we’d grab them and shove clothes in them.

While the reasons to evacuate our house in San Diego are small (tsunami is unlikely, wildfire where we live is also not likely; the most likely reason is post earthquake having a limited amount of time to gather stuff), I think that given 15 minutes, we would be in good shape to evacuate. The plan is pretty basic and consists of gathering the following:

  • Laptop bag in my office – stuff it with the hard drives and other documents (extra keys and safe deposit key as well) that are kept in the fire safe. The bag already has an extra laptop charger and a way to connect the drives. Also, put my laptop in the bag.
  • Portable electronics including hotspot, laptop, iPads and phones.
  • Plastic boxes next to the fire safe that has chargers, some camping supplies, flashlights, HAM radio equipment.Supply Boxes
  • My wallet and keys.
  • Portable HAM radio off my desk.
  • Hats and coats that are easy to grab on the way out.
  • 3 large plastic containers of emergency supplies that are in the garage.
    Emergency Supplies
  • Tents, sleeping bags, chairs, and tarps used for camping.
    Tents and Camping Supplies
  • Gallons of water that are in the garage stored right as we enter the garage. We use these for camping, so they are replenished periodically.
  • Some clothes. Put them a duffel bag stored under the bag. Include hiking shoes.

After pulling together everything, I’d load it into the car (along with the mammals) and go.

Our house is relatively small and my office is right next to the garage, so getting items out of my office and loading them into the car is easy. The camping gear is in a rack above my car and the emergency supply boxes are in a cabinet right in front of my car.

I hope that I never have to use my plan, but by thinking about it and rehearsing it in my head makes me rest easier at night.

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Searching for a new car

Several years ago I was in the market for a new car. I really wanted a PHEV (plugin hybrid electric vehicle) as most of my driving is around town, but I’d have the flexibility to go on longer trips. At the time there weren’t many choices that interested me. I test drove an Audi A3 e-tron and while it was a nice little car, it didn’t have CarPlay. After Apple introduced CarPlay, I knew that I had to have it on my next vehicle as I never wanted to update the maps in the navigation again and with annual iOS updates, I knew that I’d get tweaks to the system every year which I’ve come to expect.

I continued my car search and was looking for either a compact SUV or a hatchback/wagon/5 door that had OK gas mileage, some technology and of course, CarPlay. My options were quite limited and I found the 2017 Subaru Impreza. At the time, Toyota wasn’t onboard with CarPlay, so I’d have to leave Toyota. On paper, it had everything I wanted (except PHEV). The price was right and I purchased one right when a local dealer got it. While the car isn’t a sports car, I enjoy using the paddle shifters sometimes and the car has performed OK. It was the first model year on a new platform and has had some problems (6 recalls at the last count). The car has enough room to go camping (I’ve downsized our camping equipment and am strategic about what we bring) and we’ve used it on a few road trips. I went from a Toyota Highlander to the Impreza, so I lost a bit of room.

As I mentioned earlier, CarPlay was a requirement for me and I’ve written about it before. Unfortunately, the infotainment system in the car has been the biggest disappointment for me. Early on, CarPlay wouldn’t always start and required me to figure out how to reboot the system which sometimes doesn’t work. There have been a number of software updates each requiring me to take it to the dealer. It has gotten better, but there are still times when the system won’t boot or I have to reset it. There has even been a class action lawsuit about the system. Some people on various forums ask if others bought the car just because of the infotainment system or they are overreacting; I actually did purchase the car because of the infotainment system and would have looked elsewhere.

Other than the infotainment system, the car has functioned adequately; my new car excitement has worn off and it is just a car. I’ve had an issue with low speed shifting, but the dealer says that it isn’t a problem. With only a few Subaru dealers in San Diego, taking it to another one for service isn’t a feasible option to get a second opinion.

The car still serves its purpose and has pretty low mileage on it, but right before the world got turned upside down this year, I saw that Toyota was coming out with a PHEV RAV4. After reading about it, I knew that this is the car I would have purchased if it had been out a few years earlier. The waiting game began once I had my heart set on replacing my car!

As I’ve written about before, dealers are charging huge markups and supply is limited on the RAV4 Prime, so I wait. I’d really like to get this vehicle before the federal tax credit runs out because it will be a lot less attractive at $7,500 (+ local incentives) more.

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Scott’s Cyber Safety Primer

Lately the topic of cyber safety has come up a few times for me. I’m the point person for CyberChip for my son’s Scout troop. I help the Scouts earn the award which is required for the Scout and Star ranks; I’ve overseen a few Scouts complete the requirements. In addition to this, I’ve seen how something innocuous that has been posted years ago can come back and be devastating. Lastly, have seen how someone could easily get scammed.

While I don’t claim to be an expert on cyber security, I did have lunch with Phil Zimmerman to discuss working on he Mac port of PGP and had Phil Karn as a mentor teaching me about Linux! I’ve been using the Internet for over a quarter of a century and have learned a few things about “being safe”.

Using two of the points of CyberChip Internet Safety Pledge as a starting point, I’m going to elaborate on what I think is important.

I will think before I post.

This is a pretty important point as everything on the Internet exists forever. If you do a search on my name, you’ll find posts I made years ago. Luckily, most of it is innocent. Recently I learned of someone that was terminated from a position because of a post they made many years ago. Even if you post something that you think is private, send a picture to someone or send a text, there could be a data breach or the recipient could take the message and post it, blackmail you, or in other way cause you irreparable harm.

While your messages to others could be encrypted (like using iMessage), the other end can easily take a screenshot of whatever you wrote and use it against you.

Unless you want something to come back on you at some point in the future, don’t post it or send it electronically.

Also, remember that when you take photos, the location of the photo is stamped (in the metadata) on the photo. If you are on vacation or traveling and post pictures with the location data on the photo, people can know that you aren’t home. If you are home, people can know where you live. While there are a number of ways to find out where people live, you don’t want to make it easy on them. When sharing photos, remove the location data (in iOS when you share, there is an option to remove the data) and don’t post photos when you are traveling; wait until you return home.

I will protect myself online.

This point requires a little more effort than “thinking before you post” and relates to password security, fake websites and scammers.

Passwords

The common thinking on passwords is to create complex passwords that you can remember such as substituting numbers for letters and symbols for other letters. This thinking is nearly impossible to combine with the thinking that you should create a separate password for every website. The only way to reconcile this is to use a password manager such as 1Password, LastPass, or Dashlane to name a few. Each site must have a separate password and each password must be complex. Of course, you have to remember your “master” password to get into the password manager.

You cannot write down any of your passwords with the exception that some of the password managers setup a “recovery” sheet where you write down your master key and then the sheet should be placed in a safe or a safe deposit box. It is quite unlikely that someone will go through the trouble of getting your recovery sheet.

Websites

When I first registered a domain many years ago through Network Solutions, it wasn’t easy to do. This became a slight hurdle in people setting up scammy websites. Since then, getting a domain name and setting up a website can be done in minutes. There are tons of sites that rely on typos to major websites to redirect users to their sites. Luckily many browsers pick up on this and make it easy to get to the right site. People are taught that seeing the lock icon in a browser means that a site is secure. While that is true, you have to look at what that means. Obtaining an SSL certificate up until recently took a little extra effort and wasn’t particularly cheap. With the advent of Let’s Encrypt, getting an SSL certificate is now free and easy to setup. I use Let’s Encrypt and securing traffic from my browser to servers is great.

Securing traffic is only part of a secure website. You have no idea what happens behind the scenes. Years ago I worked for a company that stored credit cards in clear text in an unencrypted database along with the CVV codes. In my tenure at the company I worked to bring it into compliance with PCI DSS, but credit card numbers were still accessible to employees and they still had roundabout access to CVV codes.

So even if a site has a lock icon, it doesn’t mean that it is safe to visit the website. Securing the traffic is very different from a site being safe to visit. Even the federal government has given given bad advice on this.

One of the safest ways to visit a website is to use a trusted search engine such as Google or DuckDuckGo and click the links from there; most popular websites should be at the top of the search results. However, before clicking a link check that it is indeed the site you want to visit.

Scammers

The other day I got a phone call that purported to be from Apple security saying that my Apple ID had been compromised. The call came from a Michigan number and was a recording. I pressed one and was connected to an agent. I asked for his employee ID and he responded with FUC…

Companies will not proactively call you about security issues. If you suspect there is an issue, hang up and call the company to verify the information. Also asking for an employee ID is a good way to weed out some scammers.

Never give out information to anyone that calls you; always call the company back if you have questions. Also never give anyone access to your computer remotely.

AppStores/Installing Software/Malware

If possible, always install software from an AppStore. While this doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get malware, it does reduce the possibility. Verify that software comes from a known source if you can’t install it from an App Store.

If you see messages that your computer is running slow or “click here” to get support, you may have malware on your computer. If this happens, immediately turn off WiFi and either contact your most tech savvy friend or family member for advice or take the computer to BestBuy’s GeekSquad to remove the malware.

Credit Cards

Whenever you pay for something online, always use a credit card. Never use a debit card. Credit cards have better consumer protections than debit cards. Never give a credit card number to anyone that calls you! If you make a purchase over the phone, verify that the phone number you are calling belongs to the proper company. Don’t just call any random number you find doing a Google search.

Conclusion

  • Anything you post on the Internet even in private could come back to haunt you.
  • Remove location data from photos before sharing.
  • Always use a different password for every website.
  • Use a password manager.
  • The lock icon on a website doesn’t mean the site is safe.
  • If you have to call a company, verify the number that you are calling is actually for the right company and not just some random number you found.
  • Install software from an App Store or a known source.
  • Never give your credit card number to someone that calls you. Always call a company back.
  • Never use a debit card on the Internet; only use credit cards.
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Always learning

Throughout my career I have always had to learn new technologies in order to survive and thrive. New technologies include programming languages, toolkits, and operating systems. While I learned many things in college, the one idea that has been most important to me is the ability to teach myself anything that I need to know.

In a field like technology where it is always changing, what I knew 5 years ago may no longer be relevant today. Recently I was asked about certain types of app architectures, MVC, MVVM and VIPER. At the moment I was asked, I had only used MVC and really didn’t know anything about the other 2 architectures. I’m sure this made me look like I wasn’t well versed in something that certain individuals may consider basic. Seeing a gap in my knowledge, I looked up information on what I didn’t know, consulted with a friend (and former colleague) and decided to teach myself MVVM. Within a day I had a basic understanding of MVVM and within 2 weeks, I had completely overhauled an application to use MVVM as that architecture was easy to understand and made a lot of sense moving forward.

In a job interview I’m sure employers are looking for what people know today and not what they can learn. Unfortunately they are potentially missing out on good, smart people. Technology will change; if people can’t learn they may not be able to produce apps in a few years. However, if you know COBOL and haven’t learning anything knew if 30 years, you still might be able to get a job.

While I’m definitely not at the forefront of using and knowing technologies like I mentioned above and new ways of writing apps such as SwiftUI, I have the skills to learn just about anything and quickly. Knowing technologies is great, but being able to quickly learn new ways of writing software is possibly more valuable to me.

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Working from home – Is it negotiable?

With COVID-19 having people work from home, I’m reminded of my own history of working from home.

More than 20 years ago, I worked for Critical Path Software (now part of eBay) in Portland. While Portland is a great place to visit, it wasn’t for me. I decided to leave Portland and when I told the owners of the company I was moving back to San Diego, they asked if I wanted to continue working for them. Since I had nothing else lined up (not the brightest idea to move without a job), I said sure. That was the start of me working from home.

Through many contract jobs and a full time job, I continued to work from home. I treated working from home just like working in an office and would rarely leave during the day; my work ethic wouldn’t allow it. As time went on, I realized that being in one place (i.e., my home office), wasn’t always where I did my best thinking. Running, doing errands, and being out of the house sometimes produced my best work which helped me relax the need to be in the “office”. This didn’t mean I was working any less and in fact, I’d argue that my productivity has gone up since I started being less rigid about being in the office.

Several years ago, I was offered a position that met all my requirements for a job, except for one, working from home. I thought about this a lot and decided that commuting to an office would take a lot out of me and turned it down. I know that people commute all the time, but for someone that hasn’t, I just couldn’t make that sacrifice. Luckily I still had my contract work, so I was able to make the choice.

Four years ago I was laid off and looking for work. The first job that I was offered seemed great, but I’d have to go into an office everyday. I figured how bad could it be since the commute was against traffic and just 30 minutes each way. As I didn’t have any other job prospects, I took the job. As soon as I started the job, it started to wear me down. I got up at 6 am to be at work at 7 am and leave at 3:30 pm. Everyday I came home and fell asleep on the couch. Between the commute, having to be around people all day, and being stuck in a cubical was too much for me to handle. I did manage to work from home once a week towards the end of my short stint there and swore I’d never work in an office again.

Now we’re here with many people working from home and some are asking why can’t they always work from home? I think that too many companies are stuck with the mentality that being in an office is required to do work. That clearly isn’t the case for good people. I hope that having people work from home now will get companies to re-think their work from home strategy.

Here’s some advice I’d like to offer companies that haven’t let people work from home in the past and won’t let them work from home regularly once we get back to “normal”:

  • A high performing person will be high performing no whatever where he or she is.
  • “Water cooler” talk can still happen using tools such as Slack. I chat with a former colleague and friend all the time; he helps me solve problems and is a great sounding board. I’ve only been in the same room with him maybe 3 or 4 times since we first started working together years ago.
  • Ad hoc design discussions can be just as effective through email, instant messages, screen sharing and phone.
  • People can be much less stressed by not having to deal with a commute and coming into an office.
  • Companies are missing out on good people by requiring them to come into the office or being in any particular location.
  • Being flexible makes people happier.

I’d like to say that working from home is non-negotiable for any future job or contract I take. Going into an office every once in a while is fine, but I’m not sure I could be happy going into an office everyday and that directly translates into not being fully productive.

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Monitoring a SunPower Solar System

[Update: Here is a new Node-RED flow that works better with Home Assistant’s Energy Dashboard.]

After years of waffling on if I should install solar on my house, I finally decided that it would be a good investment. While the federal tax credit went down from 30% to 26%, I would still get a bit of my investment back. The tax credit goes to 22% next year and then goes away, so if I didn’t make the leap now, I’m not sure financially it would make sense for a long time until the panel prices come way down.

Like most major investments, I did a significant amount of research. I got proposals from 9 companies using a variety of panels and inverters. For better or worse, I went with a SunPower system. SunPower wants to make it easy for people to see how much energy they are producing and their monitoring site has a very, very simple dashboard. Apparently their older dashboard (still available via a different URL that uses Flash) showed output on a per panel basis. When I asked SunPower about this, here was their response:

Unfortunately, our monitoring website only shows production data of the system as a whole. Inverter level monitoring was only offered to dealers for troubleshooting and/or repair purposes. This was not offered to homeowners because, after lengthy evaluation, that feature offers more information than is necessary to monitor ongoing system performance, but not enough information to help identify problems (on the rare occasions when they do occur). We also had concerns about the feature’s design, in part due to negative feedback from customers.

After a bit of research, I found that the monitoring device (PVS6) actually has the ability to be queried for local data. An individual with better hacking/detective skills than me figured out the commands to send to the unit and posted information on GitHub describing the setup. That looked pretty straight forward. So I decided to figure out how to integrate it into Home Assistant and into my Grafana graphs.

First step was to configure a Raspberry Pi as basically a bridge where HTTP requests sent to one port would be redirected out the other port. I didn’t need a full fledged router for this, just an HTTP proxy. I decided to use a Raspberry Pi Zero W that I had lying around as a base. I ordered an Ethernet adapter for it and that was it for hardware. My son designed a case for both pieces and I 3D printed it.

Configuring the Raspberry Pi

  1. Download the Raspberry Pi Imager
  2. Select the Raspbian Lite image.
  3. Write the image to an SD card.
  4. Create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf at the root of the image with the following:
    ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US

network={
 ssid="<Name of your WiFi>"
psk="<Password for your WiFi>"
}
  5. Add a file called ssh at the root of the image. This file should be empty.
  6. Assign a static IP address mapping on your router for the Pi.
  7. Boot the Raspberry Pi. Login using username: pi password: raspberry
  8. Update the OS using
    sudo apt-get update
  9. Install ha-proxy
    sudo apt-get install haproxy
  10. Modify /etc/dhcpcd.conf by adding the following so that the Ethernet going to the PVS6 doesn’t attempt to setup a gateway. If this happens, the Pi no longer responds over WiFi.
    interface eth0
nogateway
  11. Add the following to /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg:
    frontend http-in
    bind *:80
    default_backend backend_servers

backend backend_servers
    server sv1 172.27.153.1:80

listen stats
    bind *:8080
    stats enable
    stats uri /
    stats refresh 10s
    stats admin if LOCALHOST
  12. Reboot the Pi.

Now when you issue HTTP calls to the Pi, they’ll goto the PVS6.

Setting up Home Assistant

I use Node-RED for most of my automations, so the following is how I poll the PVS6 from Node-RED.

Node-RED PVS6

Basically what I do is make an HTTP call to the Raspberry Pi over the WiFi interface that redirects to the PVS6. Using the information from the GitHub repo I found, the call is: http://10.0.3.55/cgi-bin/dl_cgi?Command=DeviceList

I then parse out the different devices that are returned (one for each inverter, one for the monitoring unit, one for the consumption meter and one for the production meter). My installer didn’t hook up the consumption meter, but I use an older version of the Rainforest Automation EAGLE-200 to connect to my electric meter and get consumption data.

This Node-RED flow generates multiple sensors that can then be used to display data right in Home Assistant or in Grafana. There is more information in the output than I need such as AC voltage, DC voltage, AC current, DC, current, etc. I use Home Assistant’s HTTP interface to create new sensors and since I have no idea how fast it can respond, I rate limit the updating of the sensors.

You can download my Node-RED flow from here.

Grafana

I’m going to leave it as an exercise for the reader to setup pretty pictures in Grafana. I’ve setup a basic dashboard and some other graphs. The per panel graphs are useful to tell me if a panel isn’t operating properly. While SunPower doesn’t really want you to know this information, it is very helpful. My system was turned on (my installer and SunPower can remotely disable my system which really bothers me) yesterday and I noticed that 1 of the panels wasn’t generating power. This amounts to about 8% of my overall system; most people wouldn’t know this which makes it even more important to be able to get status on a per panel basis.

Energy Dashboard

Energy Usage

Per Panel Monitoring

Conclusion

I’ve written up this guide to help others, but also to refresh my memory in the future to figure out what I did. My home automation system is growing more and more complex by the day and if I don’t document at least parts of it, I’ll never be able to troubleshoot it.

Feel free to ask questions or provide comments.

 

 

Grafana PanelsDownload