Monitoring of battery voltage via winbox

Trezona · Wed Aug 23, 2006 12:03 am

Hi,
Can anyone tell me if it is at all possible to monitor the battery voltage on a RB 532 using winbox?

Thanks,
Clive.

arE · Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:27 am

Battery?

Trezona · Wed Aug 23, 2006 1:07 pm

Hi,
Yes, if i am running the routerboard 532 off a 12v battery that is being charged. I would like to be able to monitor the voltage of the 12v battery remotely!!

Clive.

Wed Aug 23, 2006 1:09 pm

we neither sell nor officially support batteries, so you will not be able to monitor any batteries unless they are some clever ones, and for example support SNMP

Trezona · Wed Aug 23, 2006 1:13 pm

Thanks Normis.

This would be a pretty good/easy feature to impliment, i am sure

Clive.

jp · Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:36 pm

Voltage measurement would be an excellent feature for not only battery powered sites, but long POE runs or highly loaded POE systems for troubleshooting.

I imagine you could setup some sort of low-voltage disconnect relay aside from the MT. Then use the relay to disconnect an ethernet loopback cable from an unused ethernet port on the MT. Then your ethernet status would indicate charging/power status.

stephenpatrick · Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:50 pm

That's a neat workaround.
Another solution would be to put a comparitor IC and level shifter on an RS232 port - a pretty simple circuit. Then use MT's "serial port monitor" to give you an indication.

http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.9/tools/sigwatch

If you were being really clever, a more complex circuit (resistor ladder, several comparitors) could give you 6-level output (or 6-bit output if you want to write some decode software).

dtr - Data Terminal Ready (pin #4)
rts - Request To Send (pin #7)
cts - Clear To Send (pin #8)
dcd - Data Carrier Detect (pin #1)
ri - Ring Indicator (pin #9)
dsr - Data Set Ready (pin #6)

Regards

Stephen

e2346437 · Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:46 am

This is the equipment that we use to monitor battery voltage via TCP/IP over a wireless link in Northern Maine. We have it plugged into Ether3 on an RB532:

http://www.bndcom.com/products.html

I use the version 1 product to monitor the voltage coming from my solar cells, windmill, and battery all at the same time. I can also monitor temperature. Version 2 of the product has 8 voltage inputs and 4 power relays.

All monitored parameters can be graphed via SNMP with MRTG or PRTG or the like. There is Windows software to monitor the board in real-time. It also has an embedded web server.

After having 3 years of uptime on this board in an unheated tower shack, I can vouch for it's reliability!

surfnet · Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:32 pm

how much are those units? Thier website gives no prices.

e2346437 · Sun Oct 01, 2006 6:19 am

how much are those units? Thier website gives no prices.

When we purchased version 1 about 2-3 years ago, it was around $400 shipped. You should contact them to find out for sure, they are very helpful and knowledgeable.

Eric

9h1lo · Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:38 pm

I am developing a 12v UPS that I want to connect to the RB532 Serial Port so the Mikrotik sends an email when the power: GOES OFF, BATTERY IS LOW, POWER RETURNS

The UPS is designed to run the RB532 + 2 mPCI cards for about 35hours at average WLAN throughput

The microcontroller is a PIC16F877A including a status LCD

I understand that routeros supports the APC smart protocol, which I found some info on the web, but didn't really find it usefull/understandable

I have not managed to "trick" router os by sending data via the serial port from a PC (Null modem --> Hyperterm); Under UPS in Winbox the UPS status status remains OFFLINE

Does anyone know anything about the protocol or what values have to be sent via serial to the mikrotik. What I am after are just 3 states; On mains ; On battery ; battery low

I might also consider writing an ADC program to read the voltage from the battery and send that to the Mikrotik aswell

Once this project is complete I am willing to publish it including PCB's and PIC source code on the mikrotik WIKI page

Thanks

Stanley Grixti 9H1LO

andreacoppini · Wed Dec 06, 2006 7:03 am

Stanley Grixti 9H1LO

9H... sounds very close to home

Bomber67 · Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:40 pm

This is the equipment that we use to monitor battery voltage via TCP/IP over a wireless link in Northern Maine. We have it plugged into Ether3 on an RB532:

http://www.bndcom.com/products.html

I use the version 1 product to monitor the voltage coming from my solar cells, windmill, and battery all at the same time. I can also monitor temperature. Version 2 of the product has 8 voltage inputs and 4 power relays.

All monitored parameters can be graphed via SNMP with MRTG or PRTG or the like. There is Windows software to monitor the board in real-time. It also has an embedded web server.

After having 3 years of uptime on this board in an unheated tower shack, I can vouch for it's reliability!

Very interesting!

I am considering a project involving an off-grid repeater site that must run on solar/wind with diesel backup.

What I would like is continious logging of voltage and charge current from solar/wind, generator auto-start on low voltage and auto-stop when batts are full.
I don't want to have to login and check status, I want the system to send an alarm SMS on gennie startup and on lo-lo voltage (gennie fail to start).

Anyone running a setup like this? Is this possible with the RMS?

e2346437 · Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:26 am

Read this, it's just what you are looking for!

http://www.bndcom.com/rms/power_relay_project.htm

Eric

Bomber67 · Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:43 am

Read this, it's just what you are looking for!

http://www.bndcom.com/rms/power_relay_project.htm

Eric

Yes, read that one and it's indeed very interesting!
However, I want to take it even further and allow gennie auto-start.

Can this be done by scripting in the RMS?

e2346437 · Sun Dec 10, 2006 3:06 pm

Yes. You can do simple scripts with the v1 unit, but they can only automatically be launched by schedule or by changing the input on one of the 5 available I/O pins.

Once the event trigger is fired, you have the commands for Relay 1, 2, and 3 on/off, and the commands to wait 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 seconds between actions.

Using a combination of these commands, BND was able to auto-start their generator using the v1 unit. They either ran the auto-start script daily or had an external circuit that would read the battery voltage and output 5+ volts DC to one of the I/O pins when the battery voltage dropped too low.

If it were me I'd purchase the v2 unit that uses embedded Linux and has greater capability for scripting.

Eric

Bomber67 · Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:15 pm

Nice!
Have you got any more info on this relay project?
The description on their pages is about remote-starting manually.

e2346437 · Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:20 pm

I don't have any more info. You should give them a call. They are very nice guys and will be very helpful.

Eric

daniel · Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:17 am

By the way, aside from power voltage monitoring, it would be very nice if the RouterBOARDs can shut down if the power supply is under some voltage.
I have seen lots of cases, where wireless modules lose their config, or sometimes (happens a lot with CM9) have their configuration eeprom destroyed.

Jrslick22 · Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:43 pm

By the way, aside from power voltage monitoring, it would be very nice if the RouterBOARDs can shut down if the power supply is under some voltage.
I have seen lots of cases, where wireless modules lose their config, or sometimes (happens a lot with CM9) have their configuration eeprom destroyed.

i personally have had this happen a number of times. would be a great feature

odie · Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:56 pm

we use powersupplies that have a batt charger/ups function and also have a low voltage cut off
http://www.meanwell.com/search/AD-55/default.htm
and for this we bult a small box that monitors batt voltage, line voltage and temperatur it also regualtes a fan up to 12V/20W of power this thing talks to the mikrotiks using the ups package
and we also did a script emailing state changes of the powersupply and overtemperature
if there is any interest we could produce some ..

otto

Jrslick22 · Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:09 pm

the newer RB333 supports voltage monitoring, but it wont run off anything less than 18v so thats probably not going to help anyway, cool aye.

tully · Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:52 am

See here in the manual, it supports 12V.
http://www.routerboard.com/pdf/rb333ugBe.pdf

Jrslick22 · Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:03 am

yes your right thats what the manual says, buy one and try it and you'll see what i mean.

It will only boot off 12v if it has no radios in it.

tully · Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:49 pm

Do you mean 12V using POE or using the jack?

Jrslick22 · Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:39 pm

tully · Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:54 am

It should work fine with 12V connected to the jack -- even down to 10V. Perhaps you don't have a high enough amp rating on your 12V power supply. I would suggest 2.5-3A as in reality the amp rating is only good for 80% of the value when under continuous load. 100% of the value is generally peaks.

For POE runs, the voltage may go down to low and the amps may be too high for the RJ45 connector ratings.

Jrslick22 · Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:06 pm

I know what it should do the point is it don't. i have a 12 solar site that provides up to 80 amps @ 12v to our inverter but will it run a RB333? NO. has all sorts of problems, brought a 18v inverter no problem since.

Write this down if you plan on running one on 12 or less, it wont work!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

tully · Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:52 pm

We have tested it here and it does work. You probably have a voltage drop on the cable or from your battery supply. Please use a multimeter to measure the input voltage on the board.

aaa · Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:27 pm

up to 80 amps @ 12v

That mean 1kW! Real cool solar panel!!! I want it

) !

Jrslick22 · Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:13 pm

We have tested it here and it does work. You probably have a voltage drop on the cable or from your battery supply. Please use a multimeter to measure the input voltage on the board.

you have it running on 12v do you? how many radio's what kind, i couldnt get it to boot reliably on a bench top even with the power pack plugged straight into the dc header.

Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:05 am

no problems when using 12V (4,58A) power supply - got all the cards regonized and they are working.

[admin@MikroTik] /system health> print
    fan-mode: manual
     use-fan: main
  active-fan: main
     voltage: 12.2

Jrslick22 · Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:24 am

well buggar me, how many amps is it drawing?

stephenpatrick · Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:50 pm

More general note on power, might apply here

Sometimes, the "stiffness" of a power supply affects the ability of complex boards to boot, due to speed of the PSU startup.
Example, an ATX PC supply provides power immediately to the rails; a laptop "brick" often has a slower "on" ramp.
I've seen certain types of boards have problems with this before - i.e. will boot cleanly on an ATX supply but not with a laptop-style "power brick". Sometimes holding the CPU reset line down for a second or two solves such issues.

That might or might not apply in this case.
Not sure with a solar site - if there are large batteries, it should be pretty clean.

Long cables make the above worse - there is a series resistance "drop" on the cables. This has a worse effect at lower input voltages than higher ones - because the onboard regulation (normally switchmode) draws more current to draw enough power, and hence the V=IR drop is worse during the startup.
As well as the board electronics requiring power, there are capacitors which need to charge up, which draws more current in the instant of applying power.
Worst case is a heavily-loaded board on a long cable, with a low voltage supply.
What you see in the lab and in the field on long cables are often different.

Hope some of that is of help

Regards

Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:46 pm

could you tell, what wireless cards you are using?
Maybe there could be some problem when some of those cards have 3.3V to 5V voltage convertes for power amps and having bigger pulses it could take too much current at the same time, and that could cause the board to reboot when you have 12V power supply.

Jrslick22 · Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:34 pm

cable length 5 meters
radios xr2, xr5, r52h

even with no radios in it is would not boot reliably on less than 18v.

Ive put a 5 amp lamp on the end of the power cable, it ran fine drawing all 5 amps according to the meters

as far as i can tell the MT only draws around 300-400ma

tully · Wed Sep 26, 2007 10:23 am

If the board will not run fine with the 12V power supply, then something is wrong with 12V power supply or the board you have. Can you try with a different 12V power supply and report back.

Jrslick22 · Wed Sep 26, 2007 11:17 am

it is a 13.4v 1200Ah battery bank powering 6 other 532 MT's

...and before it is suggested that is about 2.5amps worth of MT's, 80amp - 2.5amps = 77.5 i don't think its a batterys cant provide enough power issue, i may have just got the one out of every 1000 with the doggy power regulator.

tully · Thu Sep 27, 2007 10:21 am

The RB333 does not have a transformer (isolation). Connecting it to the power supply with all the other boards in parallel can make problems. I suggest that you have an electrician consult you on what is the best way to set up your system.

Jrslick22 · Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:00 am

I disagree.

It worked the same on the bench top with no other MT plugged in.
It is working fine now that it is on an 18v inverter.

besides most electricians are dumb arses anyway.

tully · Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:54 am

I think you have problems with your 12V power supplies. I suggest that users disregard your message and use their own experience and our test results.

Montana · Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:13 am

I have 2 RB333's running on a mountian top site the is solar/wind powered and so far I have not had any power issues. One unit is running SR2-CM9-CM9 and it is happy. The other is running a XR5-SR5-CM9 and it too seems to be fine. Cable runs are 30 and 20 feet of CAT5e cable.
The only thing that seems odd is that it show 100% cpu usage for a few seconds then drops back to 2 to 10 % when I know that the cpu usage is not that high.

Jrslick22 · Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:46 am

I have a second 333 coming out of a site soon so ill be able to test them side by side.

Honestly it wouldnt even boot with no cards in it on 12v, 18v no provlem and yes i have used diffrent bower pac's cables and a combination of pppoe and DC jack

Tasmanet · Fri Sep 28, 2007 4:06 pm

We have a custom site power controller system made.
Were using it to manage our Mikrotik systems run from 12v UPS, or remote solar powered sites.

- 12v - 48v supply.
-4 x Relay controlled outputs (3amp ea max) fused. (so you can power up and down routerboards)
-Battery Voltage, Current draw, and charge current.
-Relay / Fuse output status.
-5 x GPIO's
-Low voltage cut out (configured from web interface)
-10mbit ethernet interface
- 2x16 line LCD
- Web and SNMP managed (in process of making widget for OSX)

If anyone is interested im sure our supplier can make more available. Approx ($350 Australian)

Cheers,
Andy

Jrslick22 · Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:43 pm

Sounds great, web site?

Tasmanet · Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:03 pm

There is no website, its a custom build that we have designed....

Equis · Sun Sep 30, 2007 7:24 am

I'm intrested also, (I'm in Australia also)

Tasmanet · Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:44 pm

Hey Guys,

Just in the process of getting some photos of the units, and the specs of the devices posted on a website.

PM me if you want any info in the mean time.

Equis · Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:43 pm

PM me if you want any info in the mean time.

Got many PM's?

Tasmanet · Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:36 pm

anders@tasmanet.com.au might be easier!

Marc_Dilasser · Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:46 pm

Another monitoring of solar battery voltage, using RS232:
http://www.lekermeur.net/lndkavr/ (in French)

miahac · Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:59 am

google
snmp dc voltage monitor

yields lots of solutions
including

this http://ipenabled.com/dcv.html
for only $125

you could always have your dude monitor the snmp and shut down the MT if voltage drops, of course, how do you turn it back on lol

-J

Tasmanet · Sat Nov 24, 2007 1:48 am

google
snmp dc voltage monitor

yields lots of solutions
including

this http://ipenabled.com/dcv.html
for only $125

you could always have your dude monitor the snmp and shut down the MT if voltage drops, of course, how do you turn it back on lol

-J

Just looking at that product, from what i can tell, you require more than just the dcv unit for $125.
You also need the sensor probe controller unit. An additional $200 or so ontop of the $125.

miahac · Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:40 pm

I found this

http://www.rittal.by/products/katalog.a ... om&lang=GB

Marc_Dilasser · Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:36 pm

...
you could always have your dude monitor the snmp and shut down the MT if voltage drops, of course, how do you turn it back on lol

With a small controller you can cut the power on the MT for a duration,
for example 6 hours during the night, when the battery is low.

We have an AP working like that for one year, in automated mode.
http://www.lekermeur.net/lndkavr/

odie · Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:31 am

have a look at this:
http://www.stone-rich.at/dl/str-ups/default.htm
and here you can get it
http://www.evonet.at/mikrotik/catalog/i ... p?cPath=27

Who is online