Nexus Generator Controller
Faustina Bartsch
During generator operation, the controller continuously monitors and adjusts the output voltage to keep it within one percent of the operating level, even if power usage spikes for a brief moment such as when a heavy-duty motor starts.
Once utility power is restored, the home is switched back to the utility supply which removes the load from from the generator. The controller keeps the engine running without a load for about one minute which allows the generator to cool down before it is shut off.
No engine should sit unused for long periods of time. Once per week, the controller starts the engine and runs it long enough to circulate oil and prevent damage to engine seals. The exercise program runs once per week for twelve minutes.
Incorporated within the controller is the smart battery charger, which monitors the battery used to start the generator. The smart charger prevents over charging and regulates the amount of current supplied to the battery. It also monitors the battery condition and can alert the homeowner in if the battery has failed or is about to failed.
These controllers (and any OEM Nexus Liquid Cooled Controller) do not come programmed from the factory! Because these controllers are used in many sizes and variations of generators, they must have the correct parameters entered to tell the controller what generator it's connected to.
These controllers REQUIRE programming once installed in the generator and MUST be programmed correctly or damage to the generator, controller, connected loads or any combination of the 3 could occur!! If you are unfamiliar with programming this panel, it's advised that you contact a local dealer to complete the install for you. If you have questions please ask BEFORE ordering this controller.
With a highly complex and important generator component, you want to find a manufacturer you trust. Generac is a reliable brand for generator replacement parts. When you install the Generac 0H7668DSRV Nexus Control Panel, you know your generator will give you power when you need it.
These controllers (and any OEM Nexus Liquid Cooled Controller) do not come programmed. They require programming once installed in the generator and must be programmed correctly or you risk damage to the generator, controller, connected loads or any combination of the three.
The enclosure he lists is a little large for the space available in the 11kw enclosure so I ordered this one instead =oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 everything does fit in this. I used 3M mounting tape to mount the PI and the serial board. In order for everything to fit I had to mount the serial board to the inside of the door with the ribbon cable on the hinge side.
Now the hardware is in order you need to setup your pi and load mono, plenty of guides on this and you can use io_guy's guide for nodelink PI setup if you need to. Pages 1 and 2 of this doc _Setup_V5.pdf
If you want to run the serial test he lists on this page make sure you stop genmon "sudo /home/pi/genmon/startgenmon.sh stop" before running the test or the test will fail because the application locks the serial port.
I had WiFi connectivity issues with the PI until I did the following. Run "sudo rpi-update" , edit the script.sh file "sudo nano script.sh" and add "iwconfig wlan power off" the file, save it and reboot.
Once you are able to connect the the GenMon web interface and everything looks good you can add the GenMon device in Nodelink and use Nodelink to install the node to the ISY. If you don't have nodelink setup yet use io_guy's guide for this.
Sean I'd recommend putting a additional short post over in Nodelink with Nodelink, Generac and V5 as tags, and simply point a link back here. That way those looking through nodelink will find it. That's a likely place they'd start. The post does belong here, but its very well written and helpful to the Nodelink crowd as well
I have a pi4, genmon installed, and cables loopback tested and all ready to go. Just waiting on an enclosure, the one recommend in this post seems to now have a defect that means door wont close once opened fully without manually squeezing and wiggling one of the hinge pins each time - same on two units. I have an alternate coming.
I am waiting to hear about the new enclosure - just gearing up to do the same. Have a nexus controller (says siemens on it but looks the same) - keep us posted and if you don't mind, share the enclosure
Sorry for the delay i had some serious issues with networking on the pi 4 and on pi zero. Turns out raspbian doesn't seem to like the DHCP packets from the Windows 2019 DHCP server i have, so at the end of the lease period it would drop leases on both wifi and LAN - took me 2 weeks to figure that out.
I switched mid project from pi 4 (which was fully installed in the enclosure) to pi zero mainly a) to troubleshoot the network issue and b)its smaller, puts out less heat and i just wanted excuse to get one. so far it runs about 40% CPU so seems up to the job - i purchased the zero with the GPIO header already installed.
Oh an i fitted a grommet to seal the box - not sure if that was a wise idea for something that generates hit, but i live in Seattle and need to keep out damp and mold. Another reason to stick with the pi zero. Great news, you can take an SD card straight out of a working pi4 and stick it in a zero and it works!
I also took the suggestion of the project owner and put metal and nylon braid around my serial cables - which is fun, looks neat but may be unnecessary - also i learnt if you do that and use shrink tube only use a little or it affects the radius the cable can turn. I had to remove about 1 to 2 cm of my heat shrink.
There is a Manual/Auto/Off switch that determines how the generators start and stop. The Auto switch allows the controller to automatically start and stop the generator if the utility voltage is disconnected.
Enclosure:
Generac ensures its generators are protected from inclement weather. Generac offers a weather-resistant enclosure for all their standby generators. The RhinoCoat finish system uses a process that evenly joins paint particles to every part of the metal surface. This allows for a more consistent coverage to all surfaces. The RhinoCoat is made of sturdy galvanneal steel.
Generac also offers premium aluminum enclosures for its residential standby generators. These enclosures are rust and corrosion resistant. For high humidity conditions aluminum enclosures are recommended to ensure decades of worry free service.
NEXUS Wireless Remote Monitor:
Used for generators with 8-150 kW, the NEXUS provides visual and audio alerts when your generator requires maintenance. The NEXUS is small and compact and has a magnetic back for refrigerator mounting and easy access.
The Advanced NEXUS Wireless has an LCD display and is AC powered with battery backup and a cradle for desk or wall mounting. The Advanced NEXUS features a permanent time/date stamped history of generator events such as starting and stopping. There is also graphing capability for trending of engine RPM, voltage, and battery.
I have been playing around with creating AirConsole controllers using Construct 2. Construct 2 comes with several scaling modes to ensure that the canvas scales as desired. I have tested every possible combination, and found that the simulator (running in Safari, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox) works correctly, the Nexus 5 works correctly, but the iPhone 7 Plus and iPad (running the iPhone AirConsole app) both do not obey the scaling I have set in Construct 2.
At 1280x720, this means a portion of the controller is always offscreen. I have used both the "AirConsole" and "AirConsoleController" plugins on the screen side, and both have the same issue. When I remove both plugins from my Construct 2 project and load the page using airconsole.com/#[SERVER_URL]/pong, the scaling problem goes away, but I lose the ability to call AirConsole API methods (set orientation to landscape, handshake, messaging, etc.).
I fully understand that this probably not high on the priority list, as the AirConsole team has done a great job putting together the controller generator, but would it be possible to take a look into this problem on iOS devices? Is there something happening on the AirConsole side that would overwrite the Construct 2 screen scaling rules for iOS controllers?
One of our team's goals is to create a controller minigame that a user would play on their device while the main game was in progress on screen.html. It would much simpler to do this in Construct 2, rather than coding it by hand.
I reran a quick test of the Pong example using the Phaser.io tank screen as a controller, instead of the pong buttons. In this test, I would expect to see the tank screen loading onto the controller. This is what I see on the simulator and on my Nexus 5. On my iPhone, half of the tank screen is off of the edge of the phone.
Since a similar behavior occurs in both the Construct 2 and Phaser.io projects, I have a hunch that the problem might occur whenever a canvas element is placed on iOS screens for AirConsole controllers.
Waves are a more consistent form of clean energy than wind and solar and the latest Wave Energy Converters (WEC) platforms like CETO 6 have evolved into complex multi-generator designs with a high energy capture potential for financial viability. Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) controller can handle these complexities and control the WEC optimally unlike the default engineering controllers like Spring Damper which suffer from lower energy capture and mechanical stress from the spinning yaw motion. In this paper, we look beyond the normal hyper-parameter and MARL agent tuning and explored the most suitable architecture for the neural network function approximators for the policy and critic networks of MARL which act as its brain. We found that unlike the commonly used fully connected network (FCN) for MARL, the sequential models like transformers and LSTMs can model the WEC system dynamics better. Our novel transformer architecture, Skip Transformer-XL (STrXL), with several gated residual connections in and around the transformer block performed better than the state-of-the-art with faster training convergence. STrXL boosts energy efficiency by an average of 25% to 28% over the existing spring damper (SD) controller for waves at different angles and almost eliminated the mechanical stress from the rotational yaw motion, saving costly maintenance on open seas, and thus reducing the Levelized Cost of wave energy (LCOE). Demo:
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