Sleep mode

[fa1321tx]

First off love the Genmon system! Big thanks to everyone involved in making it what it is today. I was wondering if there is a Sleep Mode or if it's worth considering as a new feature?
The idea being during the middle of the night I do not really need my generator to kick on waking me up if the power is out for a coupe of hours. I would prefer to sleep through it and my food isn't going to spoil in that window.

[jgyates]

Hi @fa1321tx

No there is not, mainly because the air cooled generac models do not support switching to "Off" mode via modbus. The liquid cooled models do support this but this is not a current feature of genmon. The industrial models supported probably would not want this functionality.

[jgyates]

Are you proposing to wire a relay to the off switch on the controller? or some type of mechanism that pushes the button on the outside of the controller?

The raspberry pi can provide a low voltage output via a GPIO signal. Modifying the add on gengpio.py could be used to add a timer to activate and deactivate the GPIO output.

Let me know how you intend to implement this. I can potentially add this functionality to the add on if you can provide details on the implementation that could be incorporated in the project wiki (where are you making the relay connections, a wiring diagram, recommended part number, etc). This would allow others to benefit from this modification also.

[fa1321tx]

I was thinking of something simple that would just prevent it from starting. For instance on the circuit board J2-5 & J2-7 complete the crank and run circuit. If you placed a normally closed relay that would hold that circuit open during the Sleep Mode it would not start. I image it would generate some alarms in the system when activated.

Schematic 1 LG MASTER[1].pdf

[jgyates]

sounds reasonable. I will add this functionality to the feature list. I will update this thread when this is complete.

[jgyates]

Maybe worth a test first to make sure it does not trigger an alarm as @gm58 suggested. An alarm preventing the system from starting would defeat the purpose you intend.

[gm58]

post disappeared

Wouldn't the example given throw an Alarm that would require going to the controller to reset? If so, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of doing this remotely? I guess it might save you one trip to the generator.

[fa1321tx]

Maybe worth a test first to make sure it does not trigger an alarm as @gm58 suggested. An alarm preventing the system from starting would defeat the purpose you intend.
I agree it needs a test run. The weather has been horrible lately so I will test it soon as these storms back off.

[jgyates]

I went ahead and added this functionality in the GPIO output add on (gengpio.py). This add on is configured with the config file i/etc/genmon/gengpio.conf. The updated source, which you can get from updating the softare from the about page in the web interface, also updates the comments in the ./genmon/conf/gengpio.conf file:

genmon/conf/gengpio.conf

Line 53 in 3314c62

# Set this to a unique non conflicting GPIO pin number to enable setting

I would do the following:

1. update your genmon via the about page.

2. copy the new gengpio.conf file to /etc/genmon

   cd genmon
   sudo cp ./genmon/conf /etc/genmon

3. edit the newly copied file /etc/genmon/gengpio.conf to update these entries:

PIN_EXTERNAL_SIGNAL
PIN_EXTERNAL_SIGNAL_ON_TIME
PIN_EXTERNAL_SIGNAL_ONF_TIME

You will likely need to disable on GPIO pin in the config file by setting it to zero. This will free up the GPIO pin to be used for PIN_EXTERNAL_SIGNAL.

Let me know how your test goes and if you have any issues.