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
GoodWe RS485 Controller — Home Assistant add-on repository
Replaces a GoodWe battery inverter's vendor controller with a local one: holds net grid exchange at zero by emulating the inverter's smart meter over RS485, and runs the monthly battery maintenance cycle the vendor box was doing.
repository.yaml add-on repository metadata
goodwe_controller/ the add-on
config.yaml manifest + options schema (the per-site config form)
app/ the controller
control.py the control law — pure functions, no I/O
maintenance.py the monthly cycle state machine
hass.py Supervisor/Core API access
store.py persistent state in /data
mqtt.py optional status entities
web.py ingress UI
main.py orchestration, heartbeat, failsafe behaviour
test_control.py runnable checks — no framework needed
test_maintenance.py runnable checks — walks a full cycle in fake time
DOCS.md the add-on's documentation tab
firmware/goodwe-master.yaml ESPHome config for the T-CAN485
estop/rs485_log.py optional RS485 e-stop / bus witness
docs/GoodWe-RS485-Field-Guide.pdf the guide techs carry (10pp, A4)
docs/build_guide.py its single source - rebuilds the HTML and PDF
FIELD-GUIDE.md how to edit and rebuild the guide
Install
Settings → Add-ons → Add-on store → ⋮ → Repositories → add this repository's URL, then install GoodWe RS485 Controller.
Requires Home Assistant OS or Supervised. Add-ons cannot be installed on HA Container or Core.
Read this first
The inverter holds its last command forever. It has no meter-timeout of its own — a controller that dies mid-command leaves the battery running until a human intervenes. Measured on real hardware: 5 kW of discharge held for 113 seconds after a controller went silent.
Three layers exist because of that, and only the third covers the Home Assistant machine itself dying:
- ESP32 watchdog — no fresh setpoint for ~30 s → command 0 W, and keep commanding it.
- Wind-down before firmware updates — 0 W written before the update starts.
- RS485 e-stop (optional) — writes 0 W after 30 s of total bus silence.
Sites sold without the e-stop must have the acknowledgement in FIELD-GUIDE.md
§10 signed.
Development
The control law and the maintenance machine are pure Python with no Home Assistant imports, so they run anywhere:
cd goodwe_controller
python3 test_control.py
python3 test_maintenance.py
Both must pass before shipping any change. They are not unit-test theatre —
each assertion corresponds to a rule whose absence produced an observed failure
on real hardware, and the comments in control.py say which.
Compatibility
Check the serial number, not the model name. Characters 6-8 of the serial are the platform tag:
| tag | platform | verdict |
|---|---|---|
ESU EMU ESA BPS BPU EMJ IJL |
105 — ES/EM/BP, AA55-era meter bus | supported |
SPB SPN |
745 — SBP G2 (GW…-SBP-20) |
no |
ESN ESC |
745 — ES G2 (GW…-ES-20) |
no |
ETU EHU BTU … |
205/745/753 — ET/EH/BT hybrids | no |
SDT DST MSU NSU … |
PV-only inverters — no battery to control | no |
A "-20" or "G2" suffix means a different platform with a different meter
protocol. The tags come from the goodwe library's PLATFORM_105_MODELS, which
is also what Home Assistant's own integration uses to pick a protocol.
- GoodWe ES / BP family inverters (AA55 / RS485 meter-bus generation)
- The protocol is reverse-engineered. There is no vendor contract, and a firmware change on GoodWe's side could break every installation at once. Say so when you sell it.