In rural areas, a stable electricity supply is in 2022 still not a certainty. To provide these areas with constant power, components to create a DC micro-grid are developed. This paper discusses the possibilities to create insight into the performance, the power which is drawn, a
...
In rural areas, a stable electricity supply is in 2022 still not a certainty. To provide these areas with constant power, components to create a DC micro-grid are developed. This paper discusses the possibilities to create insight into the performance, the power which is drawn, and the productivity of the components. These parameters are fundamental for the users, operators, and developers. For offline data logging, the software is written for a micro-controller to log relevant data to a microSD card. The microcontroller is programmed in C, and the communication between the controller and the micro-SD card will be taken care of by the SPI protocol. The control of the file system is realized with FatFS, saving comma separate value files (.csv) containing all the desired data. For real-time insight and easy control of the device, an app framework is developed. This framework makes use of MQTT, Flutter, and Dart, to create a user-friendly and structured environment. The bi-directional communication between the app and the controller is done with the use of a wifi module, which communicates with the microcontroller via UART. The paper stands out with the integration of multiple controllers, program languages, communication protocols, and physical components.