Bluetooth range : how to connect microinverters ??

[aliceetben]

Hello everyone !

I just bought and connected 3 Stream microinverters and a Stream AC. For now, my HomeAssistant server (on a Pi3B+) is not bluetooth enabled but this could be easily fixed. However, there is no way that bluetooth will go through our massive walls all the long way to the solar panels outside. The outside is covered by wifi comfortably and for now everything works through the official app.
In your opinion, what is the best way ?

1. get a random bluetooth adapter long power cable, temporarily move the server outside, connect all through bluetooth, move the server back inside and hope the connection never breaks ?
2. find a way to use a bluetooth proxy ? i saw a discussion about Shelly bluetooth, didn't seem to be the way but i'm all ears
3. get through the cloud even though i don't want to ?
4. i missed something, please explain it to me ?

i thank you in advance !
Alice

[GnoX]

One way that many people use is getting any ESP32 dev board, flashing ESPHome and configuring it as bluetooth proxy. We do have some config info in our wiki.

[aliceetben]

Thanks for the advice !

This means you have to get a power supply (even a small USB) to your solar panels as well, if i'm not mistaken, to supply the board and keep it online ? in our case that would mean getting a watertight case as well because everything is outside, against the thick wall of the barn, on the windy and rainy side.

to be honest, getting the power supply to the panels will be a pain in our particular case, and i don't feel quite ready to get to the dark side of flashing stuff with series ports and pins and all that. i'm open to suggestions, of course :)

[GnoX]

This means you have to get a power supply (even a small USB) to your solar panels as well, if i'm not mistaken, to supply the board and keep it online ? in our case that would mean getting a watertight case as well because everything is outside, against the thick wall of the barn, on the windy and rainy side.

You don't necessarily have to put it outdoors, depends on how far are your inverters from your home. If you set esp to the highest transmit power, solder an antenna or get a board with UFL connector and use an external antenna, you can get quite good range from it. But I guess at this point you could just get a bluetooth adapter with external antenna and put an antenna outside.

i don't feel quite ready to get to the dark side of flashing stuff with series ports and pins and all that

Most ESPs can now be flashed over USB and straight from the browser so that should not be a problem.

[rabits]

Yeah, I also thought about such external devices, and the only thing I found useful - is to buy a solar-panel battery pack, replace the battery inside to a smaller one and put esp32 into. They are relatively cheap / weather resistant and solar will give just enough for esp32 as ble proxy. I would not recommend to use long-range ble here, too much potential issues with it... But yeah, not a ready to deploy solution.

[aliceetben]

@GnoX thanks for all the tips, I thought about the antenna, but with soldering and still being in unfriendly environment it's not doable enough imo (the barn is open to the wind, birds, and has a lot of dust)

@rabits i like the outdoor battery replacement, and could probably do something with the bigger battery (vaccum robot and kitchen scale already got extra power). i will still look around a bit but we're getting closer !

thanks a lot both of you !