SPAN.io and Powerwall interface

[Joesmoe3]

Maybe a year and a half ago, after seeing a video by “Undecided” where he had paired a SPAN.io “smart” panel with his complementary Powerwalls, I thought that was a good idea, and I went through the process of having my local electrician become a certified SPAN installer, and long story short, was installed.

Part of the promise, and installation, was an Ethernet cable run between the panel and the Powerwall+ maintenance port.

The app for the SPAN then had a nice flow diagram, and allowed me to program individual circuits for “Critical” (on through grid power loss), intermediate (I forget what that one was for), and all the rest.

Back in December, the SPAN app reported it had lost communication with the Powerwall.

SPAN support was doing all they could - there was communication, or at least lights showing at both ends - SPAN said they could not “see” the Powerwall, and were only seeing an error they said was “incorrect password.”

I can use a browser and access the Powerwall, though I can see anything useful there.

I’m guessing there is a separate password for maintenance functions than the one printed on the sticker on the inside cover.

In any case, SPAN has gone dark, no longer responding to email.

Might anyone here shed some light on, offer suggestions for this situation ?

Thank you.

 

[cali8484]

It appears that SPAN uses the unsupported API on the Tesla Gateway. You may want to troubleshoot the Gateway based on the info here SPAN - Smart Electrical Panel.

 

[Vines]

Maybe a year and a half ago, after seeing a video by “Undecided” where he had paired a SPAN.io “smart” panel with his complementary Powerwalls, I thought that was a good idea, and I went through the process of having my local electrician become a certified SPAN installer, and long story short, was installed.

Part of the promise, and installation, was an Ethernet cable run between the panel and the Powerwall+ maintenance port.

The app for the SPAN then had a nice flow diagram, and allowed me to program individual circuits for “Critical” (on through grid power loss), intermediate (I forget what that one was for), and all the rest.

Back in December, the SPAN app reported it had lost communication with the Powerwall.

SPAN support was doing all they could - there was communication, or at least lights showing at both ends - SPAN said they could not “see” the Powerwall, and were only seeing an error they said was “incorrect password.”

I can use a browser and access the Powerwall, though I can see anything useful there.

I’m guessing there is a separate password for maintenance functions than the one printed on the sticker on the inside cover.

In any case, SPAN has gone dark, no longer responding to email.

Might anyone here shed some light on, offer suggestions for this situation ?

Thank you.

This was always sort of the danger with these SPAN panels, because they relied on the Powerwall datastream to do their functions.

Hopefully, they can make their product work again, which seems reasonable given that other users are programming with the API in their spare time.

 

[brkaus]

More concerning is if they are not replying to requests.

 

[Joesmoe3]

Heard from them tonight. He’s frustrated - with remote access to the panel, he says the Powerwall+ is not responding to data requests from WiFi, Eth0, nor Eth1.

He gave me a link to the Powerwall+ owner manual (which I don’t believe Tesla ever gave me) and asked me to reset the Powerwall to see if that might “wake up” the data response.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

Did you powerwall firmware get upgraDDed?

 

[buckets0fun]

Did you powerwall firmware get upgraDDed?

They (tesla) have an official API, maybe span should get with @offandonagain as his app is phenomenal.

Or at least they could open their API so someone responsive and innovative can take over with a better interface.

 

[Joesmoe3]

Did you powerwall firmware get upgraDDed?

I don’t know, but almost certainly the case. Thank you.

 

[Joesmoe3]

Still open questions here.

The Tesla tech showed up, said nothing wrong with the hard wire part of the Solar roof/Powerwall +.

He got on the phone to the secret number back server side, and 15 minutes later, my system was back to nominal.

Now here is a curious thing. He knew enough about ethernet to say, “You know, your ethernet cable to the SPAN panel is not doing anything. Do you mind if I disconnect it ?"

I said, “Sure."

So while watching the SPAN app, which was working properly at that point showing the solar production, the power pulled by the house, the batteries fully charged, and the excess going to the grid [their app is nice that way], he pulled the plug from the hardwire port in the solar hardware box on top of the Powerwall + , and nothing changed. The SPAN app continued to function. We watched for a full five minutes, with changing numbers, so the SPAN app was getting updated from somewhere other than the hardwired ethernet.

Enquiring minds want to know.

 

[jjrandorin]

Enquiring minds want to know.

So, since you are talking about data going to the span app, what does Span say when you ask them, or post on their boards?

 

[offandonagain]

Enquiring minds want to know.

I don't use SPAN, so these are just assumptions based on what I know about Tesla hardware and I've read about how SPAN works:

SPAN uses the ethernet cable as a reliable connection to the gateway/Powerwall+. It presents itself as a "router" to the gateway, which solves two problems: no need to guess or configure the IP address of the gateway on the local network, and no unreliable wifi connection to the gateway that depends on how your home network is configured. Basically it avoids all the issues people have when trying to connect to their gateway. SPAN will route traffic from the gateway to Tesla's servers (the gateway expects internet connection from the ethernet cable), while also having control over the ip address of the gateway on this subnetwork (which allows SPAN to talk to the gateway API directly).

So the cable is not used by SPAN to talk to the internet -- it needs to provide internet access to the gateway using that cable, likely via a separate Wi-Fi connection to your home. And once you unplugged the cable, the gateway either switched to your home wifi (if you had it configured) or cellular connection. You want to avoid using the cellular connection, so make sure you have wifi configured.

I don't know why SPAN is having issues with this integration, but I would suspect Tesla's recent changes to the gateway API. If all the information SPAN needs is whether the grid is up and what the Powerwall state of charge is, they should just switch to Tesla's Fleet API.

 

[Joesmoe3]

So, since you are talking about data going to the span app, what does Span say when you ask them, or post on their boards?

Good question, and they haven’t yet.