₦airaland Forum

litaninja:
New RPi 4 came in the mail.
My MPPSolar Monitoring is progressing to permanent site. Now trying to sort out the grafana dashboard part.

This is raspberry right?

You had it preprogrammed?

adrusa:
The three ports is the relay. It opens and connect whatever load you want to control. One is the common (C), one is Normally Open (NO) and the other is Normally Close (NC). You need to use only one leg to break the circuit, I usually use the L leg.
The two ports are for powering the Timer. L and N goes in there.

Thanks but I've done the connection. Completely online now. My issue is with the programming / timer setting. I can't seem to get around it.

The one operational now has just been put on permanent "on" position. Even to get there was small wahala. No shaking sha, I go figure am out.

eleojo23:


She no dey enjoy the light? The space is a small price to pay for constant light

Bros, the enjoyment no be here oo. I doubt if my kids don ever shout "up NEPA" in this house. If not for the numerous sirens for area we for no dey even know when them bring am sef, or the plenty millionaires with ever ready standby gens when the light disappears.

Still as humans e go cross her mind every once in a while when she dey go on her washing machine say this is not where my machine is supposed to be. By then na deaf ears I dey always form sha.

GeorgeD1:
i see a pattern unfolding on the thread where members are divided into two groups.
in one group are those that readily spend their time providing answers to questions
asked by solar newbies (no matter how difficult or silly). in the second group are those
who only come to the thread to offload their products. they give us a long list of what they
have in their warehouses, flood the whole place with pictures and disappear only to appear
next time and repeat same. no attempt to answer any questions, no attempt to weigh in
on any discussion. they are just so focused on selling...
my thoughts then would be that, if everyone else only come here to flood the pages of this
thread with adverts, post long list of wares and vanish into thin air, will it still be an interesting
place for folks to visit? will it still hold the kind of attraction it presently it has where people
come to seek knowledge and get enriched by sound discussion on solar issues?
if the answer to the above is no, where then would the customers come from whose
patronage these marketers desperately seek....?

Baba, not all sellers are technically savvy. Here is a symbiotic relationship I believe. They rely on the tech heads to keep the page going while they lay in their adverts. Also, plenty sellers here na "baranda", na marketers them be not shop or goods owners.

Few come back to thank the page when purchases are made with referrals from here. It's all a win-win situation in my books, only when it doesn't become excessive though.

My brothers, after many years of buying Chinco I'm sure there is someone here that understands & speaks Chinese English.

If you can help a brother, make una help me translate the attached manual please. Timer has been installed but not yet programmed.

Thanks in advance.

eleojo23:
That's why they say common sense is not common.

I can't see myself living without some form of alternative energy supply even na DC wiring, I must have light at least.

The architect that will design my future house should get ready to include a power room in the drawing. It is a must!

I no get power room for my house oo, na madam laundry I thief use.

Abeg no remind am oo cos we never still settle that matter.

ojesymsym:
This type of battery connection always confuses me when I see it. Each battery has 6 terminals, how does that work?
Do you have a drawing for it?

Terminals on the battery relate to the individual cells that make it up. Each comes with their positive & negative terminal which you have to parallel to get the full AH as printed on the battery. Number of cells is determined by the amount of AH on offer.

From here you connect in series to make up your desired bank voltage. Remember the batteries are nominal 2v. Quite easy to get around though.

GeorgeD1:
you're right bro, but i didn't get mine from him. i guess other guys (probably not on this forum) saw the great bargain
and quickly grabbed them. by the time i made contact, they were long gone.

so, yes. those batteries are actually industrial type off-grid lead acid batteries (if you check the specs i posted earlier on).
they are the type you find at telecoms base stations, bank ups rooms, remote sites for weather monitoring equipment, etc
given their size and weight, they are an "install and forget" kind of investment. nobody expects to be changing out such
massive size of batteries every two, three or five years. it's really back-breaking work aside the financial outflow.
how they suddenly became available to the public as "project left over" is still a puzzle i'm yet to resolve...

You have them in your house already so leave the detective work for batman. Congratulations on the upgrade though.

ojeysky:
Cool, emoncms is a fantastic tool and recently I started playing with node-red on my pi3+ to automate some of my loads based on battery SOC.

That said @essegis if setting all these up from scratch sounds daunting. You may go the faster route below:

1. Acquire a pi3+ or pi4
2. Get a minimum of 32GB SD card (preferably class10 upwards)
3. Head to IC software dot co dot za to download the trial version of the ICC and if you like it, you can pay for a licence key.

The ICC software has a lot of stuff including emoncms already pre-installed and according to their documentation, it's compatible with victron and axpert inverters.

Thanks bro.

In my search I saw some devices e.g. Sense. They had little clamp on meters where they get the current from and use that to do power and energy calculations. Looks like with you guys systems this is already settled with a BMV right?

I don go store your reply sharply oo. Remote monitoring has become a must for me as e be like say I don too dey disturb madam to go check things.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
This whole subject is a veritable rabbit hole to go down.

You can start with building a dashboard to monitor and log your solar generation and household consumption both locally and remotely.

To achieve this you would need a compatible inverter (e.g axpert type or Victron) or compatible Battery Monitor e.g BMV 7XX. For the solar generation side, a Victron MPPT or other device that supports ModBus TCP or MQTT or serial comms would work.

All the information that your devices spit can be aggregated and hosted on EmonCMS [will host whatever metric you can post and is free to use locally or pay per feed for the web accessible version] or PVOutput.org for the solar generation and a few other metrics.

In my case, I have many years of pro level programming for medium scale applications under the belt so I simply write my own custom Python scripts that take data from any devices (my Venus GX as central data aggregator) and posts it to any platform of choice. Thus I dispense with all the NodeRed, OpenHAB and other crutches that people are wont to use - IMAO too much overhead for a simple task as monitoring.

All these are best done via a minimalist always on and always online PC such as a RaspBerry Pi 3B+.

You get a dashboard such as the below and can change on the fly to suit any need. If you put it online, you can view your home system from anywhere in the world.

So you need to acquire a RaspBerry Pi preferably 3B+, you need a device with serial or RS485 or ModBus TCP or MQTT comms that you can harvest data from and then you need a place to store and view the data (EmonCMS for general monitoring, PVOutput for a more restricted/solar generation focused) solution.

The setup will be Device >> RaspBerry Pi >> Hosting Interface e.g EmonCMS. Your device can be inverter, battery monitor, GX device or charge controller or anything really so long as you are able to speak commands to it over the wire and have it obey or talk back to you

Credits to BigRovar for giving me the foundations upon which all my monitoring and logging solutions are built and I also call out Oga Barezzi to showcase some of those beautiful dashboards he has been playing with in secret.

Thanks for this reply baba. I have quickly grabbed it and gone to save it in my Telegram saved messages. Will try my best to follow the steps.

One day like that Ogas Niyi & Ojeysky were discussing here & should I say they were speaking in tongues. Cos strange words were being spilled everywhere.

Tasmota
Node Red
MQTT
Flash
Sonoff
Emoncms
etc

Had to roll off my YouTube bundle & went searching. Surprised that instead of seeing Solar monitoring what they were teaching was home automation. Looked cool and all that as you can incorporate solar monitoring into it and many other things.

Annoyingly, no one ever stated a starting point. Like acquire this, this and that before you start DIY & programing. And these are where to buy them from. I don't know if anyone here can help me with that.

Just tell me what to buy and where to get them to get started. Raspberry, laptop, arduino, sensors, softwares to get.....these things still look & sound like imaginary substances to me. Thanks.

omotoda:
Attached connection was done on a friends 24v inverter. Is this even possible? Two 12voltscbatteriescin series and one of the series battery connected to another 12volt battery in parallel

I told him he is playing with fire but he claims he had been using it line that for months.

I could take a picture but I attached a sketch

I don't think he's playing with fire. He only succeeded in derating his battery bank to essentially 2 batteries worth. That's why it's not advisable cos of the money for the extra one battery presently doing nothing would have been used somewhere else.

ojeysky:
At 81% SOC battery was not charging and was on a load of almost 5kw hence the reduction in voltage. As expected, voltage drop is dependent on the amount of load, the depth would be more of it were lead acid

At 71% SOC battery was charging hence the reason for higher voltage.

Meaning SOC is not a straight trajectory then, where a particular voltage has a representative percentage. Other factors including charging status and amount of load come into play.

Thanks for the explanation.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
So in my installs, the usual average yield is at least 4 times the PV nameplate on a good day with ideal weather and sufficient energy demand.

I consider a regular daily yield 3 times the mounted PV nameplate to be unimpressive or average at best.

I kept quiet on this as I had so far not been able to get my large PV array to yield above 3 times the nameplate even though I believe it was pretty well optimised - attributed this to insufficient energy demand from AC loads and refilling depleted battery bank.

Well in the last few days I have had a very full and busy house and this evening saw good yield results from my 19.5kw PV array.

I look forward to a day when the sun and my consumption align and I can gross 100kwh daily yield

This is the part I don't understand from you and Ojeysky anytime you post your emoncms pictures. In this post one picture is saying battery 50.7v but 74% while at another time 49.6v at 81%. I have always thought the SOC curve is a somewhat straight line or I maybe be wrong.

Can you please explain this?

ojeysky:
Sample of what a poor hervest day can look like, sun was not smiling at all

AE has made uncle change the meaning of "sun is not smiling".

Valto:
SOROTEC 3kva 24V 80A Mppt wifi enabled Hybrid inverter for sale @ 270k whatsapp:080-8541-5985
Key Features:
1. Touch screen display
2.PV and utility power take the load at same time(can setting)
3.Output power factor PF=1.0
4.On&Off Grid with energy storage
5. Energy generated record,load record,history information and fault record
6.Language and time setting
7.Structure with dust filter
8.AC charging and AC output time setting
9.Charging voltage and charging current timing
10.External Wi-Fi device optional(android phone monitoring)
11.Parallel operation with up to 6 units only available
12. batteryless function
13.Wide PV input range 120-450VDC
14.Independent CPU
15.MAX PV Array power 4500W
16.Solar and Utility supply power to the load when solar power is not sufficient to load
17. 90A mppt solar controller
18 60A utility charger
19. dedicated lithium battery profile
20. all functions adjustable and programmable.

Can you explain number 13 please. I don't understand what you mean by wide range for Voc. Normally it's just one figure.

Also what's the individual utility charge current and that for the MPPT. Which of them has this 80A? Thanks.

ceaser:
Also about the freezer thingy, I'm getting led to believe that the regular 40% energy saving compressors may be almost as good as the inverter conpressors,; that is of course minus the fact that the latter does not have prohibitive initial surge current. My freezer that is regular compressor is on a 12v system. It is currently seriousssssly frozen inside (with frosts all over even the underside of the lid). With this it seems there is an improvement with consumption. By evening, the battery (12v220ah LFP) is at 13.2v and by 6am in the morning, it at 13.0v or 13.1v. This does not usually happen when the freezer is freshly stocked with items and the freezing will have to be started over; during such periods, the battery is at 12.8v by morning. I don't have a wattmeter in-line, so this is anecdotal evidence at best.

This seems to be the whole concept behind inverter freezer too; that is, when appropriate temperature is reached and maintained for long time, consumption drops significantly.

I think I share your perception when it comes to this inverter technology business. My 40% efficient freezer to me does far as in far better than the inverter fridge. I've not been able to talk much since cos for one fridge vs freezer, ratings are different (even though I think both are the biggest in their category), brands are different and I have not done any official test. But the inverter dey enjoy when only freezer dey on top as against when fridge is on top.

I think I'm about getting tired of 12v system. I have advantages, in fact many, from it part of which is that I have not had a single burnt out bulb for the past 4 years. This I believe is because I use limiting resistors at the point of entry to each bulb to reduce the in-flow voltage and by extension the inflow current into the bulb, less than the specs of the bulb. What this effectively does is that it reduces the lumen/brightness lightly but I also get to preserve the life of the LED chips for longer because they get less hot and degrade less faster. I haven't even had to change any.

I maintained my 12v system when I upgraded my overall system not so long ago. Using it to run the above said fridge, freezer and security lights. The issue that I've always been running from has been finding an acceptable means to charge a 12v system. Presently on LFP my conventional charge is not enough to float it in the day. 12v system demands too much when it comes to charging and even their CC ratings are so small you have to add multiple CC to be able to get anything appreciable. Whereas you can put more than 15 solar panels on one 48v CC you will need nothing less that 5 12v CC to be able to achieve same.

godspeed:
Hello house,

So I decided to do a minor upgrade to my setup.

My previous setup was 2* 250 watts solar panels (poly)
1 tubular battery 220 amps
1 kva (12v) inverter
30/40 amps MPPT CC

I have note upgraded to:

Added 2 *300 watts solar panels (mono)
Changed my battery to 2* 200 amps deep cycle
Changed my inverter to 2.5kva 24 volts
My CC remains unchanged.

All the solar panels are connected in parallel (24 volts each.

Now the mystery.

Since I upgraded last week, my harvest has gone down so considerably.

Under my previous setup, I was harvesting btw 80-90 amps daily but since I've upgraded, the max I've harvested is 25 amps(really?) and the sun has been shining.

I'm really so confused. I hv called the installer and he promised to come check by weekend but before he comes, I want to know exactly what the problem could be cos he himself sounded confused.

I hv been looking at my MPPT CC. I changed the battery settings from flooded to solid(dunno if this is correct) to see if there will be changes. I'll check when I get home In the evening.

Pls help

Baba, you dey harvest 80-90A from a 30A CC? That side weak me oo. Though I have seen panels on this platform performing wonders I don't know whether this your CC follow join.

Anyway, as for the 25A you're getting now, it is well within the rating of your CC & I believe its good enough considering your set up. One quick knowledge to always put in mind is a particular set up will only give you half the charge current if you double the system voltage. I hope I'm correct sha and I hope you understand.

omotoda:
I need the input if the gurus on something please.I have a 12 volt inverter system connected to 3 units of 105ah ritar batteries that is charged by 640watts solar panel used solely to power my small bruhm freezer (90 litres) occasionally.

I intend to upgrade to a 24volt inverter system but would want to know if I can add a new 100ah battery to the existing 3 units to form 2s2p battery array on the 24 volt inverter.( I intend to increase the panels to 1300 watts also).

The batteries are never discharged below 12.5volts as it is only used occasionally.

Baba, leave your system as it is. If its not broken don't fix it. You have a balanced system from your explanation abeg leave am till it starts giving one issue or another.

Also,dont mix old and new Lead Acid batteries. So is the cash to get 4 new ones worth it?

essegis:
From your basic explanation I will say go for either A or B. First ask yourself a few questions. Which is sloped southwards with least slope angle. You know solar orientation changes all year/life round. So those shadows start, stop and orientation will change too.

I don't know if you own the house & can still make corrections but when I was building mine I visited site every time with a compass and sun monitoring. This prompted me to construct my carport sloped southwards & placed with the least shadow effects.

I don't believe the roof is the best place to mount panels in this country especially for us wey slope am up to 2 storey building heights. But if you got no option look for the one wey face south and fill if up first.

As for distance from CC, easily worked around with proper cable sizing. I hope the attached pictures will help.

@alstacs, sorry network been no gree me add the pictures of my set up.

One thing you should know is if you are going with option A you should have a set up good enough to float your battery under 4hrs. Though that's the normal time lag used in these calculations. Put it in place and I'm sure you should be good.

See mine, 24 panels 300w each sloped southwards to the minutest angle the carport guys could afford. Attached to 2 different systems. The excess on the gen house is sloped facing northwards, not my plan but the original panels were too big (unknown to me) and na fight cos I refused them going on the house roof. Madam no gree the gen house oo.

alstacs:
Good morning house, I have a fundamental problem that needs advice of the experts and your experience here.
I designated a safe well ventilated part of the house to situate my inverter but I have a problem choosing where to locate the solar panels.

The problems with the alternative solar panels location sites are presented below:

A. Car port.
It is close to the location of the inverter but at 9am, only 30% of the space is exposed to sun, at 10am about 50% and by 11am it is fully exposed to sun till sunset.
It is about 6 to 8m from the location of the inverter.

B. BQ Roof
It is exposed to the sun from about 7am to
to sunset. It is easy to access but it is about 18m from the location of the inverter and if the cables are to be buried underground, an additional length of about 9m needs to be added.

C. Main House Roof.
It's closest to the inverter but the roof is quite steep and the face of the roof selected is limited by the numbers of panels it can take. It's exposed to sunshine from about 7am to sunset. The installers think it's should be avoided.

Kindly advise.
Do I sacrifice the closeness of the car port to loss of 3hrs of sunshine daily?
Or to take advantage of the BQ good expose to sunshine but in the process run close to 30m of cable between the panels and charge controller?

Thank you.
Happy Sallah Celebrations

From your basic explanation I will say go for either A or B. First ask yourself a few questions. Which is sloped southwards with least slope angle. You know solar orientation changes all year/life round. So those shadows start, stop and orientation will change too.

I don't know if you own the house & can still make corrections but when I was building mine I visited site every time with a compass and sun monitoring. This prompted me to construct my carport sloped southwards & placed with the least shadow effects.

I don't believe the roof is the best place to mount panels in this country especially for us wey slope am up to 2 storey building heights. But if you got no option look for the one wey face south and fill if up first.

As for distance from CC, easily worked around with proper cable sizing. I hope the attached pictures will help.

dapsyra:
We arranged the cells into 22S to achieve 52.8v nominal

You took 2 packs and continued the series connection from the 1st to the 2nd pack while also removing the last 2 modules from the 2nd pack then. Abi you just removed everything and arranged to suit your purpose.

I love this DIY stuff.

dapsyra:
We bought some of those ones after mopping up all the 55Ah cells we could find. They are fully built modules made from 20Ah cells. I still have two or three leftover modules for sale.

How were you able to convert these to a 48v system?

I will still be on the look out for the 55AH modules. If I get them I will share them here too.

dapsyra:
I have no idea what the current price is. They are not regular stock.

We purchase them over three years ago when prices of Lithium batteries was not as affordable as it is today though we struck a very good deal because of the volume purchased.

Do you mean these ones?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-18-LTO-Titanate-Li-ion-20Ah-1-1kWh-24cell-SCiB-cells/223465807026?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D26f6ca9f961f4a0b874e1aec4c369998%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D202844717477%26itm%3D223465807026%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DToshiba&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A2b5b5261-cbdc-11ea-bded-923538c86e63%7Cparentrq%3A74fe8fdb1730a4d6b160cb43fff28418%7Ciid%3A1

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Cost to capacity ratio was one of the biggest hurdles to me going Lithium. People could not understand why I felt I needed a 48v 800Ah Lithium bank - whenever I told friends and professionals that my measured overnight consumption could be up to 15kwh they would say impossible. And this was not counting evening use o.

See below graphic at 11:25pm.

41kwh consumed before midnight on a day that solar generated 47kwh. 35% of 40kwh battery already consumed as well.

Man, the consumption here is off the chart. Probably you put everything into one system. Remember that my design? Once I did all the plus and minus and balanced it as I can the battery never leaves float oo, & na ordinary 15kwh. To the extent my CC no dey gree overwork the panels to charge am.

Thats why I no dey post solar panel draw like Ojeysky here oo dey shout panel power. Me sef is shaming of my system

dapsyra:
One man's food is another man's poison.

All the "PRO" points I listed cannot be faulted in any objective review. The only complaint I have seen about them that I did not list in my "CONs" list is the claim that their cycle efficiency is lower that other Lithium flavours. My personal experience with LTO is contrary to that claim maybe because I am not running them at 10C.

For home solar storage, nobody need 10C. At 10C, the battery bank will be depleted in 6minutes! That will be a very poor design

Yeah, I went searching last night after the post and saw the cycle efficiency default. Abeg that one no be big issue joo. Over size the bank if that's the case. Is it working? E dey bring light? E no dey die? Na wetin we dey find be that.

Enjoy bro, you've given me something to think about again and I love it.

dapsyra:
PROs:

At more than 20,000 cycles, the LTO chemistry has the longest life of all the Lithium batteries.

It can be discharged to 0v without any serious consequence. Some manufactures actually ship them out at 0v state of charge. Some of mine were at 0v when I received them.

LTO does not combust due to overcharge or any other abuse. There are a lot of LTO abuse videos on YouTube.

It can be charged and discharged at a very high 'C" rate (10C or higher). You can fully charge a LTO battery in 6minutes if you have a capable charger.

I have used mine for over two years now and I have not noticed any loss of capacity. If I consume 300Ah, it will require less than 301Ah to recharge. The cycle efficiency of mine is 99.9%.

It does not heat up during charging of discharge. It stays at room temperature 24/7.

As at today, LTO is the best battery money can buy.

CONs:

It is much more expensive than other Lithium brands

It is heavy, So, it is not very suitable for mobile application

Hmmmm.

I really didn't consider LTO when setting up my systems. With this your write its something to look up and possibly consider in the nearest future. Though in my research into Lithium I no see them praising it the way you praised unending here oo. But who am I?

Anyway, enjoy your batteries abeg.

Saipro:
A Ryobi tool in the picture. Pretty amusing. My batteries keep dying on me and the chargers are long dead. How do you charge yours?

Thats not mine bro. Picture was snapshot from a combiner box video. Why not just get another charger?

terrymason:
Please who can help with the right connection of this SPD...

I will be connecting the SPD between the PANELS and CHARGER CONTROLLER.

The problem I am having... is were will the positive and the negative wires of the panels be in the spd, and, where to connect the earth cable.

Please check picture below for easy understanding..

Kindly send a rough sketch or detailed explanation (If you can) on how to connect it... Thanks everyone...

If I'm to answer this. SPD is not connected the way you are thinking it should. I have queried why that is so severally but have been made to see reason its in its operation. You will require dedicated bussbars for this your SPD.

While the "In" is connected to the positive bussbar with the other panels positives the "Out" is connected to the negative buss. Definitely you choose one or loop both PE for your ground.

Still confused? Look at the attached pix for the normal wiring of a combiner box. Hope this helps.

olaolu11:
Good am house. Please will my 900vac luminous inverter "carry" this fridge? If yes, how long will a fully charged 200ah battery last on it with no other load attached. The fridge is 130 watts. I am thinking to use it with no other load to power the fridge during peak sun hours for 4 hours daily. Thanks.

Its actually 1.2kwh over 24hrs. This makes its rating to be actually 500wh.

With a 200ah used on a 12v system that gives 2400wh. Depending on his DOD between 50%-100% he can do between 2-4hrs with the fridge. This is not taking into consideration the start up consumption not knowing if its an inverter freezer or not.

Taking safe use for a lead acid system, its not possible to achieve 4hrs. Though I suspect your inverter can conveniently carry it with no issues.

ceaser:
It supports lithium charging out of the box. In the setting you will select "D01" which is the setting parameter for lithium which automatically puts the boost, charge and float voltages at 14.5v. You may have to edit the 14.5v to something like 14.1v though cos I noticed that with the 14.5v my BMS overcharge protect trips off at 14.4v. You may also have to increase the LVD value to 12v from the 10v default.

This is great news. Finally one thing I don't have to buy extra for with plenty searching and beg beg.

ceaser:
PowMr no get version releases bro.
They just dey produce dey go. I fear if they decide to go the version way, it'll be a way to increase the price whereas all those version thingy na just a sweet-mouthing method to increase price.

MakeSkyBlue used to have fair prices like powMr with their version 113, but as soon as they begun their version 117 and 118 WiFi wàhálà their prices doubled that of PowMr.

Funny enough the two manufacturers are always at each other's neck one branding the other as making inferior imitation.

I own the two types - one 60A MakeSkyBlue and two PowMr. They are same form factor but with slight variations in info display and recently the inclusion of WiFi capability in the version 118 of MakeSkyBlue. Also when MakeSkyBlue reaches float, the screen blue light brightens up and the displayed info repeatedly alternates between battery voltage - Panel voltage - Temperature - load power. PowMr does not do that.

Performance of the two is at par in my opinion. On price, I don fashi MakeSkyBlue tey tey.

In fact, two weeks ago, I placed an order for another two units of PowMr 60A in prep for 48v upgrade. Now 32k including standard shipping due to covid19-dollar synergism (used to be 25k). I paid around 7k more for expedited delivery via DHL as standard shipping has been negatively impacted with Corona problem. MakeSkyBlue tops at 70k each.

PowMr 60A is available on Jiji and Jumia for around 45k.

Ceasar, are you saying the 118 version can be upgraded to have WiFi? Cos I am eyeing the 119 version of MakeSkyBlue only cos of the WiFi functionality. So make I just bone and go for the 118?

Also, do I need a special tool for set up to charge Lithium with these MakeSkyBlue? Make I know so I can order once with them oo. Victron and ePever I have I had to purchase external tools for link up. Now I'm looking for a 3.81-4p connector to make the ePever link up after purchasing the Bluetooth dongle.