TAP communication protocol
Hi all,
looking for a documentation of the TAP communication protocol used over modbus. Is there anything, is TIGO TAP following Sunspec as others do?
My goal is to create a Software that does not require to have cloud connection over CCA, but instead does this locally not requiring CCA.
thanks
juergen
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Hello Juergen,
Thank you for your interesting question.
Unfortunately, Tigo does not offer any modbus/communication information for the TAPs at this time. The only way to pull data would be to set up an API connection through your account. If you'd like to do this, the information can be found in our article:
https://support.tigoenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/200863027-Tigo-Energy-API
In the meantime, I will forward your request to our engineers for consideration on new Tigo product (in the future). Thanks for your interest!-2 -
Hi Juergen,
I was thinking of something on similar lines myself. I have yet to have my system installed, it is part of a group purchase scheme, but is spec'd with panels and Tigo Optimizers, but the suppliers are yet to confirm if it will include a TAP, a CCA and the monitoring.
I have tried to find out how to keep the monitoring local and perhaps eventually incorporate it into an Emon Pi setup, but there doesn't appear to be any solid information available on any forums. My only thinking now seems to be first, confirm if the coms coming out of the TAP is indeed Modbus. If so, you could connect the TAP to a serial port on a PC (or serial to USB converter) and use something like the freeware CAS Modbus Scanner software to see if you can extract the panel data which is sitting in Modbus registers in the TAP. Then some code needs to be written to convert this data into feeds/inputs for a Emon Hub running on an Emon Pi.
Sounds like a lot of work which probably explains why nobody has bothered!
Does any of this make any sense to you as I am not too sure I understand it myself!
Regards
Alan
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Hello Alan,
Thank you for participating in Tigo Community!
I do not know if what you are describing is possible, but it's worth going through the pros and cons:- Data coming from the TAPs may not be in a modbus-friendly format
- Disconnecting TAP from CCA would cease the multi-level data interpretation that Tigo provides online
- Disconnecting TAP from CCA would cease any Rapid Shut Down (RSD) response (important for NEC regulations (U.S.A))
- Disconnecting a System from the cloud/network will affect Tigo's ability to properly diagnose system performance issues
- Blind Deployment may disqualify the system from Warranty Coverage
I have created a ticket for your question, and our Sales/Training engineers will reply more information regarding this unique question. In the meantime, we thank you for your patience.
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Hi Juergen and Alan. The communication protocol between the TAP and CCA is proprietary. The first response from Curtis says it all.
Gary Hethcoat, Sales Engineer, Tigo Energy
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Hi Alan,
Do you have the communication protocol already? I am interested as well.
See
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Hi See
Nope, the previous comments confirm the protocol is proprietary. I wasn't considering disconnecting TAP from CCA anyway, which would be considered ill-advised, but would try to run in parallel with the working setup. This would probably require a lot of time and knowledge, of which, I have not a great deal of either!
Have had the panels installed with optimisers and the TAP and CCA are up and running and performing well.
I have been overtaken by other projects so have not had the time to progress with enhancing panel monitoring.
Good luck
Alan
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Hello yongjiet & @Alan Harlow,
Thank you for your contributions to the Tigo Community.
Alan Harlow is correct, in saying that the data is both proprietary, and the TAP data cannot be read (or disconnected from the CCA). Disconnection of the TAP would cause the RSD (rapid shutdown) function to enact, and the MLPEs would no longer produce.
However, we appreciate the enthusiasm for the Tigo product and encourage you to contact our Sales Engineering team, if you have any additional questions about building and designing a Tigo System.
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I am also interested in being able to pull monitoring data locally. Some observations:
- the CCA responds to port 80, is there a way to retrieve data from the CCA?
- since the CCA pulls all the interesting data, it would be possible to attach a read-only device that simply monitors the modbus data returned by the TAP to the CCA in order to gather the data
- I find it disgusting that one has to pay to access one's own data via the Tigo Energy API when Tigo does not provide any alternative; I can rationalize opaying for additional services, but not for basic access to data that I am forced to send and cannot access in any other way
- the limited warranty still applies for 5 years in disconnected use, one 'only' looses the up-to-20-year warranty on the TS-4's as far as I can tell; there is also nothing that precludes manually reconnecting the TAP to the CCA when remote troubleshooting is desired
- I cannot find any privacy policy that covers the data sent by the CCA (I can only find https://www.tigoenergy.com/privacy-policy which only covers the use of the corporate web site)2 -
Tigo does not provide an option to collect the data locally, and as such, it must be derived from our secure data centers in the cloud. This data is not personal in nature and limited to solar system performance data only. We do not share or sell the data we collect to third parties. The data is used by Tigo only to make a better and more usable system for our customers.
Tigo values its customers deeply and protects all collected data utilizing robust security measures.
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I am also bothered by the lack of access to my performance data. I do think it is a rationale business choice to couple warranty length to your ability to monitor the systems performance over time. This gives you the ability to keep making better products and to identify trends across production batches.
However, many folks wish to be able to use things without internet access for one reason or another, so they should be able to collect data locally for their own performance analysis.
There is no technical reason why a rate limited lan local endpoint is not exposed that provides data in an open source friendly manner. It is hard to view a decision not to as one designed to control access to information and drive users to paying for access. As you stated this data is not personal in nature and limited to solar system performance data only. In fact, I would wager you already have this function as part of your development and QA testing, but disable in production for "reasons".
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Hello S T,
Thank you for your reply.
Tigo is dedicated to quality and safe data functionality. For security reasons, the data that is collected from the CCA is captured in batches that are in very dense non-visual format that is both encrypted and proprietary in nature. These batches are then de-encrypted and translated by the Tigo Cloud, to be presented with the rich visuals that our customers have come to expect from our Portal and App. Both the batching and translation both take a short amount of time, which will become ever shorter as the technology moves forward.
We understand that there are some customers who would rather have direct access, but this is not currently available due to its proprietary nature. We do apologize to anyone who is inconvenienced by this and assure you that your requests are being heard.-2 -
I am also interested in having local data. I already paid for the optimizers but I am not at all interested in purchasing a TAP + CCA only to have delayed data from the web + extra cost for the API. At that point I would want to get real time data locally. What you offer right now is not not comparable in any way. I don't want to pay a premium price for a half-functioning end product.
My inverter also has a cloud service and about once a week it has issues. Luckily they are a user-friendly company and they don't restrict users access to products that people have paid for and I am able to get more rapid data to my local database without any restrictions. Their modbus registers are available for everyone that is interested.
Is there any work being done to implement such a feature in the future or am I just going to have to accept that buying Tigo was a mistake and just believe that the optimizers work as they should. As I said before - I can't justify paying for TAP+CCA only to have slow cloud based data with additional costs. To be honest I can not see the reason why Tigo could not let us access the data locally other than greed. I would imagine that being more open about the communication protocols could also be beneficial. Right now there is a lack of respect for the customer.
Please confirm or deny the possibilities of having local data access in the near future.2 -
Hi Koti,
The CCA and TAP are required for data extraction, analysis, or display. This engineering decision is not based on greed but rather on proprietary concerns. It is the same concept as getting on the internet using your computer. You cannot directly connect your computer to the internet without a router. You cannot directly connect to the TS4s without the CCA and TAP.
The CCA and TAP do not incur extra costs outside of the initial purchase unless you want the premium service. We are working to speed things up on our servers.
I can't speak for the engineering team, but direct access to the TS4s without the CCA will probably not be an option. I am not aware of any inverter/MLPE manufacturer that offers this. They all have their own communication gateway.
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From your comment I understand that at least you believe that the communication between the optimizer and what ever endpoint is only possible with a TAP and CCA because those components need to translate the data to human readable format. However it is most likely that a regular microcontroller such as ESP32 or something similar could be used in with some other components to read the data if only the communication protocols were public. There are only so many different wireless methods that can be used for the communication between the TAP and CCA and most of those are easy to implement. For example I have a CHINT DTSU666 smart meter - Their modbus registers are available for everyone but without the proper device I can not read the data from the meter. And without the proper code the data will be in hexadecimals and not human readable. Both are easy problems to get around and in reality I can get real time data from the meter. Same for my string inverter.
I do undestrand that Tigo would not want to give up the potential selling point of the TAP and CCA products but at the price they are being sold for I would expect to have access to the data locally and without having to rely on a cloud based service and its traffic limitations.
Maybe my last comment was unclear but I would not buy the TAP + CCA only to have cloud based data for extra cost. I would seriously think about buying both of those products if I could get near real time data locally without any extra monthly payments.
I think your last comment perfectly outlines the problem with the service that is being offered right now. "We are working to speed things up on our servers."
No need for such things if you offer local data to those who want it. I don't want to pay a monthly fee to wait for the servers to "speed up" :)2 -
The CCA and TAP are required for data extraction, analysis, or display. This engineering decision is not based on greed but rather on proprietary concerns. It is the same concept as getting on the internet using your computer. You cannot directly connect your computer to the internet without a router. You cannot directly connect to the TS4s without the CCA and TAP.
The CCA and TAP do not incur extra costs outside of the initial purchase unless you want the premium service. We are working to speed things up on our servers.
I can't speak for the engineering team, but direct access to the TS4s without the CCA will probably not be an option. I am not aware of any inverter/MLPE manufacturer that offers this. They all have their own communication gateway.
I just purchased a bunch of Tigo TS4s with a TAP and CCA and very soon became irritated, disgusted, and regretful from the level of service provided. I too have a need for fast and accessible data logs for actionable automations ran locally based on PV production. Like a good little customer I went ahead and purchased your "premium service" to get access to data which originates on my side of the Internet security boundary (my router), and noticed how utterly useless the data feed is.
For one, the data is either HOURS late or never shows up. There are frequent gaps in panel level monitoring data. This is a real discrepancy because the inverter this is all tied to shows no such data gaps in its logs, which tells me that my panels have been producing the entire time.
Your cloud infrastructure is inadequate to support your paying customers and is a disgusting technical architecture that is offered at a cost on top of purchased hardware that processes this locally.
All customers should demand local, read-only/unbatched, access to data logs. This is the most scalable and secure solution. If you have doubts about this, please feel free to contact me as I have done this many times over (globally) for similar architectures.
The data logging solution you have in place only serves TIGO and not its customers. At this point I would never recommend any of your products or purchase them in the future.
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Dana Dukes Looks like Tigo has addressed this issue several times, once by the VP of Software. Looks like they are working on it. Have you cried to Reddit yet?
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Try being helpful and post your claims. It would serve others who are looking for similar answers.
To answer your question, no. But I have sent many emails through the official support channels without any helpful replies.
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Hello Dana Dukes,
Thank you for your replies and honesty on this subject.
Support Team: Tigo aims to provide the best support possible. If you are experiencing any issues with your system, you may always contact Tigo Support. Our Engineers are quick to respond and will work towards increasing the system's success.
Premium Package: Tigo's Premium upgrade provides a highly granular access to data, that is accessible within the Advanced Charts as a downloadable chart or spreadsheet. However, Premium does not offer faster speed of access and processing. My apologies for any confusion or inconvenience regarding this service.
Local Data Access: System data is captured locally, but not processed locally. Instead, the data is captured by the CCA in a proprietary language that is encrypted for security and sent to the Tigo Cloud for processing. This allows Tigo to provide a wealth of data-related functions, like:
- Secure transfer and storage of data.
- Data reliability, review, and corrections.
- Interpretation of data into a pleasant interface where it is easy to read (represented as objects and colors).
- Historical archiving, where the user or installer can access multiple days, months or years of data in a readable format.
- Mathematic separation into new data vantage points like: What is Reclaimed Power and Reclaimed Energy?
We are grateful for your business, and your feedback is important to us! I have forwarded your request to the product team for consideration on future designs for Tigo's product. I cannot guarantee a timeline for implementation, but I can say that the product team reviews all feedback and appreciates you taking the time to express your product request.
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This is a nice copy-paste reply. There are a lot of people who appreciate the easy cloud based data access but as you can see there are also a lot of users who are capable of more. Thank you for forwarding the request - I really do hope that they consider even just releasing the communication protocols because that would probably be enough for us.
Secure transfer and storage of data. - No need for secure transfer and cloud storage if it is local.
Data reliability, review, and corrections. - As we just saw from a previous reply, the data is not at all reliable.
Interpretation of data into a pleasant interface where it is easy to read (represented as objects and colors). - Average homeassistant user would run circles around the interface you offer. There is nothing special about it. Looks visibly outdated to be honest.
Historical archiving, where the user or installer can access multiple days, months or years of data in a readable format. - This can all be done locally just as good if not better. Any half decent home automation software can implement this with ease. How about the ability to turn on consumers in real time when there is enough PV output? Cant do that with the delays and inconsistent data from the cloud.
Mathematic separation into new data vantage points like: What is Reclaimed Power and Reclaimed Energy? - Maybe i misunderstood this but are you really trying to imply that only tigo is able to calculate energy(kWh) from power(W)?
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Thanks for your reply.
Regarding local access, I simply don't understand the measures taken by Tigo. The data that's captured locally are simply measurements by a solar panel. In a previous post Tigo even alluded to no personal data. Why was this designed to be so complicated and inflexible? Whatever vision for these measurements surely can't be useful based on the end result.
Home automations are here and waiting to take actions based on near-time energy usage. Have you considered the use-case of charging an EV based on PV generation? Yeah you can't do that with the current equipment. Just think-- there's a TS4, TAP, and a CCA in place that we're asked to buy, then measurements get shipped off in batches to get "processed" (which could be done locally by the customer), only to be asked to pay for that data from an infrastructure that can't support the demand.
Simply uncomplicate the workflow and provide a read-only endpoint for the local network. This way, when your cloud strategy inevitably changes, the local customer environment is unaffected.
If Tigo truly cares about customer trust, I invite you to review the recent LiftMaster/MyQ debacle. This is the sort of thing I want to avoid entirely, as I expect this equipment to live on my property for at least 15 years.
I don't require a response, but I would like for this to serve as documentation for future interested parties to stay away.
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Hello Koti Vello and Dana Dukes,
Thank you for your replies and concerns.
Regarding feedback: Our Product and Web building teams take your input seriously. If you see something that requires changes or updating, please Provide Feedback (via the Portal / EI App) as it tags your comment with the specific page for our Engineers to address.
Regarding Local Access: As a provider of Solar Optimization and inverter/battery storage equipment, Tigo is also an International SaaS company. At this time, the data captured by Tigo systems is encrypted for individual security, and proprietary in nature. This service is supplied to customers, free of charge (for non-premium), and accessible globally. If you have a request for this to be improved in any way (or to be available at the local source), please send your requests via Feedback (as described above), or open a ticket with the Tigo Support Team.
Lastly, please understand that the products and services provided by Tigo are not inflexible, but some things take time (R&D, design, patent, etc). For now, we strongly encourage you to provide more critiques via feedback, as the input will continue to help us make our product better!
Have a happy Thanksgiving!-1 -
Regarding Local Access: As a provider of Solar Optimization and inverter/battery storage equipment, Tigo is also an International SaaS company. At this time, the data captured by Tigo systems is encrypted for individual security, and proprietary in nature. This service is supplied to customers, free of charge (for non-premium), and accessible globally. If you have a request for this to be improved in any way (or to be available at the local source), please send your requests via Feedback (as described above), or open a ticket with the Tigo Support Team.
Did you miss the part where I said I pay for data log access in my original post? This certainly is not free as you claim. By this reply, I now realize that you simply don't understand the nature of this feedback on its technical terms. You are overthinking and perhaps complicating what's being requested. The local access only needs to provide unprocessed and unbatched logs by a local read-only API endpoint. Tigo simply does not need to enrich the data for this to happen. Your customers that require this can take it from there. I suspect Tigo significantly underestimates the ability of its customers or is disingenuous about addressing this need. This thread is 2 years old. I don't expect anything will change.
Lastly, please understand that the products and services provided by Tigo are not inflexible, but some things take time (R&D, design, patent, etc). For now, we strongly encourage you to provide more critiques via feedback, as the input will continue to help us make our product better!
We disagree on the level of inflexibility. At best, the data Tigo provides is a dashboard to look at passively. What's needed from the data stream is to take action in near-time (EV charging, consumption shaping, load shaving, etc.). And yes, I realize some things take time such as R&D, design, patent, etc., however my feedback is about the implementation. It is lacking. And has no value except for something pretty to look at (when the data decides to render on your dashboards hours or days later).
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Hello Dana Dukes,
Thank you for your reply.
As a customer of Tigo's Premium service, you do not pay for direct (or unprocessed) data access because it is not currently offered at this time. To make such an offering, the product team would need to redesign the product from the ground up. If, or when such a request were to be considered, it would take a bit of time. We thank you for your patience.
In the meantime, any feedback is heard and considered by Tigo's team of product engineers, if the feedback directions (discussed in the previous post) are followed.
Provide Feedback (via the Portal / EI App)0 -
As a customer of Tigo's Premium service, you do not pay for direct (or unprocessed) data access because it is not currently offered at this time. To make such an offering, the product team would need to redesign the product from the ground up. If, or when such a request were to be considered, it would take a bit of time. We thank you for your patience.
That's not what's requested here so don't bother with anything further. This thread is now 2 years old and dead.
As I said earlier, this is just documentation for the public to consume while making purchasing decisions. Your metrics are useless as of this time.
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Dana Dukes "The local access only needs to provide unprocessed and unbatched logs by a local read-only API endpoint."
What is your application? Your insistence on a 1%er request sounds fishy.0 -
This is hardly a 1% request???? This is not the only forum/website where this has been talked about. In general most people don't even bother making a thread/posts about this topic anymore because as it has been previously said - there has not been any positive response for years so why even bother talking to a company who does not care. I guess that there are a couple of different approaches to how to solve having real time local data. As i understand it - tigo does not want to reveal their communication protocol and data structure because it would mean a loss of premium users who buy the "fast" data which is actually slow :). I am not sure about your background and level of knowledge about such topics but getting the data straight from the device and bypassing the cloud is NOT impossible. Processing the data at the location is NOT a problem. Having this would be a great feature for end users. However my opinion is still that it comes down to tigo not wanting to lose potential money from selling their useless cloud service.
It is kind of frustrating to see the "community member" posts about the topic when the posts actually don't offer anything useful. Same for the posts about the need to provide feedback to the software engineers - just point them to this thread. I think we have provided quite a number of reasons for having the local data and what the benefits could be. I don't see how it would be hard for them to join the discussion directly here so all of the people interested in such a feature can see it.0 -
What is your application? Your insistence on a 1%er request sounds fishy.
Define "fishy" please. I want to stay within the realm of technical terms here.Further, if you want to know what my application is, I detailed about 3-4 use cases in this thread alone. You are just proving that Tigo has no clue what they are doing or can understand what customers are asking for. It's very simple, but is complicated by the human factor.My suggestion would be to no longer reply as this is a bad look on Tigo.1 -
I don't work for Tigo, but I use their products. This is a community forum, not just a place to complain. Please repost your use cases relevant for Tigo's information. All I read are people complaining that they do not provide local data extraction and combine that with the asinine inference that they are not getting what they paid for. You paid for the CCA and you get data from the cloud. For free.
So again, what is your application? You want local data, but why? That's what makes this sound fishy.
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Hello Dana Dukes and Koti Vello,
It helps to know a little about the person responding.
For future posts, you may always click on the name of the person to see a short description of who they are. If you have not provided a description for yourself, please consider visiting your own page and providing a bio. This can be accomplished by clicking on your name, and selecting the Edit Profile button.
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Koti Vello I am not sure how many poeple have the premium subscription, but I am pretty sure it is not even a blip on Tigo's revenue. Therefore, your premise that Tigo does not allow local access to the CCA to screw over their customers is dumb.
You have a legit complaint that the servers are slow. 45 minutes is too long for people used to instant gratification. I will ask you the same question. What is your application? What visualization rate would be acceptable for you?
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