The deadband is a one-way ratchet: any resting point inside it holds
indefinitely. Import and export are separate registers on the meter, so a
loop resting at +14 W bills 0.34 kWh/day while behaving perfectly.
target_grid_w (default -10 W) moves that residue onto the export register.
Worst billed rest point drops from 15 W to under 5 W. Behaviour is unchanged
at target_grid_w: 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two controllers writing one actuator is the failure this system exists to
avoid. "Exactly one writer" was true, but only as a convention held up by
careful reading - which does not survive an EV charger and a heat pump wanting
the same battery.
Strategies now return claims and arbiter.py resolves them:
highest-priority `set` wins (none at all means 0 W), then every `limit` whose
priority is >= that set's applies, most restrictive first; contradictory
limits command 0 W and are flagged as the bug they are.
The second clause is the whole point. "Money outranks maintenance" used to be a
hand-written exception inside a Jinja template; it is now a consequence of the
priorities - the charge-only limit binds the loop but cannot bind a
higher-priority peak claim.
Also: maintenance shaping moved out of control.py, which is a controller again
and not a policy engine; the loop now tracks the arbiter's actual output rather
than its own last wish, so it does not jump when it regains control; and every
decision explains itself ("loop -> 0 W, limited by maintenance(charge-only)")
in the UI and the log.
19 new assertions in test_arbiter.py, each one a precedence question someone
will eventually ask in the field. Deployed to the reference site as 0.2.0 and
holding grid within a few watts of zero.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016NckgXecasQb2eSsPYNSW6
Also documents the two things that stop an install dead: the repository must be
public for Home Assistant to clone it anonymously (a private repo shows nothing
in the store and gives no useful error), and config.yaml's `version` must be
bumped for every change or Supervisor reuses the previously built image.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016NckgXecasQb2eSsPYNSW6
Migrated the reference site off the YAML packages and onto the add-on. Every
bug below presented identically: the add-on starts, logs "started", serves its
UI, and cannot do its job.
- run.sh needs #!/usr/bin/with-contenv sh. s6-overlay sanitises the environment
for services, so a plain shebang means SUPERVISOR_TOKEN is absent and every
Core API call is 401 - while homeassistant_api: true makes permissions look
granted. Startup now prints the token length and probes the API.
- Supervisor keys the image by config.yaml `version`, so rebuilding without a
bump reuses the old image. Two fixes appeared not to work because of it.
- Alpine is musl and has no aiohttp wheel on PyPI; deps now come from apk so
nothing compiles on a client's Pi.
- Alpine ships paho-mqtt 1.x, which has no CallbackAPIVersion. That raised at
construction and took the control loop down with it - so MQTT setup is now
wrapped too. Observability must never be able to stop the controller.
- MQTT discovery is published from on_connect: paho silently drops QoS-0
publishes issued before the CONNACK, so the previous code announced nothing
while logging "MQTT connected".
- Repeated failures now log once a minute. Six warnings a second rolled the log
buffer and destroyed the startup diagnostics needed to find the 401.
- auto_start could never fire, because the store's defaults always supplied
auto: False for the fallback to find.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016NckgXecasQb2eSsPYNSW6
Turns the reference RS485 controller into something a technician can install
at a client site: a typed config form instead of YAML, an ingress UI that
names misconfiguration in words, and persistent state that cannot be broken by
a timezone.
Why an add-on rather than YAML packages or blueprints:
- Blueprints cannot create helpers, and the maintenance cycle is a state
machine whose phase and completion date must survive restarts.
- YAML packages need filesystem access, a configuration.yaml edit and a
restart - none of which belong in a client install.
- Add-ons authenticate with SUPERVISOR_TOKEN, so there is no long-lived token
to generate, store or leak on someone else's machine.
- Requires HA OS/Supervised. Container and Core installs cannot run add-ons at
all, which is a market decision, not an oversight.
The control law and the maintenance machine are pure functions with no Home
Assistant imports, and both ship with runnable checks (22 and 22 assertions).
Every assertion corresponds to a rule whose absence caused an observed failure
on hardware - the saturation duration term, the clamp-before-slew ordering, the
deadband, the sign convention.
One behaviour deliberately differs from the implementation it replaces: when
its inputs go missing this commands 0 W rather than replaying the last
setpoint. The reference version kept replaying, which the hardware watchdog
cannot catch - from the ESP32's side, Home Assistant is still talking to it.
Includes the ESPHome firmware (now parameterised: node name, inverter rating,
watchdog timeout) and the optional RS485 e-stop. FIELD-GUIDE.md carries the
commissioning gates, all judged on the wire rather than on how Home Assistant
looks, plus the written statement a site without an e-stop needs signed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016NckgXecasQb2eSsPYNSW6
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