I am running MAX BR1 Mini across a large fleet of off-grid, solar powered, unmanned trailers. We already use the IC2 API to gather GPS data. About half the fleet has an onboard PC that is on the LAN. The other half does not. All of the trailers run on 12VDC power. I need an API call on IC2 that can report the active input voltage. It can be reported on a timeframe like 1 minute, 3 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute, 15 minute, etc. Ideally, 3-10 minutes would be sufficient for our purposes. We don’t need real-time data; some people might, but we’re good with interval polling. The BR1 can already do this if there is a PC on the LAN (see link p30-32). The devices are logging this information, but it’s not showing on IC2. If we could call this, we could display it and calculate state of charge (SOC). I know for a fact that Sierra Wireless ALMS can do this. I’m swapping the fleet off RV50 for BR1 Mini, but this is creating a blind spot on getting a backdoor SOC view for our client. This should not be hard to hook up on the IC2 backend.
@Giedrius, can you shed any light on this? The GPIO already has this information flowing into it. The system can show a high/low threshhold, which means it is reading the input voltage. We just need that input voltage displayed and given an API call. The threshholds don’t really do much for us in this situation.
@Giedrius I’m going to agree with @Zakk_Stewart. It currently isn’t possible to get the input voltage via GPIO on IC2, either on the portal or the API. We haven’t been able to make the current API work for this problem. All of the necessary elements are there, but we need Peplink to develop this functionality and publish it. I have some trailers that run Victron with a dedicated SmartShunt & Cerbo GX, but the overwhelming majority do not. There is no need (or money) to install more hardware when the BR1 Mini can do it with a software fix.
If the requirement is to read GPIO state input (“0” or “1”) , then this is possible. However, if you need to read the actual voltage, then that is not supported with the current HW version.
In case you need to read that battery is over certain voltage level that should be possible to implement as well, but I would need to know more details and cirquit diagram how it is now implemented. But again it would be either “0” or “1” which would mean above or below certain level. Also, since we have 2x GPIO, you can read two levels. If this is something what could help, please create a support ticket and mention to assign it to me. We can start it from there
@Giedrius, no, we need the actual voltage (ie, 13.8v). With that information, we can calculate the SOC. That’s all we need from Peplink. Using that, we can display the current voltage, SOC and a graph of the battery SOC to the client. We can program that on our side. I’m a bit confused how the BR1 can measure the voltage above or below a certain level, but can’t display what it is using to generate that level. The threshholds are meaningless without some input voltage to compare it to. That’s like saying that I’ll show you a water tank level threshhold alert, but I won’t show what the water level is actually measured at, which I use to create the alert. If I am to take that to the logical conclusion, I would want to get a threshhold alert for every tenth of a volt from 10v to 15v (10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc). That would provide the usable information I need, however it isn’t very efficent.
if you need actual voltage (e.g. 13.8V), then this is not supported by HW. HW is missing Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) chipset. So sadly, but that is not currently supported with the current HW version.
@Giedrius, I’m surprised that this isn’t already a part of the BR1 Mini. Will that be included on HW4? Is there an inline ADC device that will feed that input voltage information into the BR1 Mini? If it is a digital input at that point, would the API be able to report it?
I have checked several variants of the Peplink routers we have access to, including the Peplink MAX BR1, Peplink MAX BR2 and Peplink MBX HD4 Peplink & MBX Mini, and confirmed that the “Analogue Input” option is not presesented as an available option.
One observation is that all of the units that do have the “GPIO Analogue Input” are stuck on Firmware 8.3.0 (too old to upgrade). Is it possible, @Giedrius, that the “Analogue Input” feature got changed to the “Igition Sense” feature in the later hardware and firmware releases?
@Giedrius, if we were somehow able to convert the analog voltage to digital, could we load that into the I/O pin and get the reading to display there? If I can get the API call on the I/O pin, then that would accomplish what we need, although we would have to retrofit all of the modems. I’ll say again that this really needs to be included natively in future HW versions.
This is actually something we have tested and tried to do extensively. After many attempts we gave in and used an external device to monitor battery voltage. I really do hope that in the mobile series BR etc they bring this functionality in. Monitoring voltage should really be a standard feature on the BR range of products.
Hello @OilAndWater,
You may need to request this through a formal Peplink Support ticket ( https://www.peplink.com/support/ ) so it can be channelled and monitored through the Peplink Engineering team.
When you create your Peplink Support Ticket, make sure to refer back to this Peplink Community Forum thread.
Once you have your Peplink Support Ticket number, post the number here for reference.
Allows us to monitor voltage and current, as well as switch loads when required.
Being web based, we are able to monitor it on InControl using InTouch. So really quite the next step up from just a voltage monitor, but it does suit our deployments well.
