Using more recent versions of Grafana

[hulkster]

I was fiddling with my dashboard and stumbled across a name/value spacing issue that is fixed is Grafana 9.2.0 - links to discussion and resolution.

This motivated me to try a more recent version of Grafana by editing powerwall.yml and re-running setup.sh. The current version is 9.1.2 and I initially went all the way to the latest which is 10.1.5. However, this introduces a really annoying issue where the panel title is not centered ... and there doesn't appear to be a work-around for that yet - discussion here.

That thread says that version 9.4.14 is the last version where centering worked. So I tried that and everything seemed to work well. So just posting an FYI in case others go down this path.

P.S. Attached is a picture of my dashboard (I'm solar-only) and which (after a bit of work) all fits nicely on 4K screen.

[jasonacox]

Thanks @hulkster ! I updated as well, to test it out. The main breaking change is with the Powerwall energy flow animation. It is showing a "white" background instead of "clear". I need to investigate why this is happening. I haven't spotted any other issues.

Another user reported doing a manual install and getting something similar (here #363) so this might have helped troubleshoot that issue as well.

Based on another user having telegraf issues, I also upgraded that to the latest and it seems to be working well. If I can fix the animation, I would propose looking at the upgrades for both (powerwall.yml snip):

    telegraf:
        image: telegraf:1.28.2
        container_name: telegraf
        hostname: telegraf
        restart: always
        user: "1000:1000"
        command: [
            "telegraf",
            "--config",
            "/etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf",
            "--config-directory",
            "/etc/telegraf/telegraf.d"
        ]
        volumes:
            - type: bind
              source: ./telegraf.conf
              target: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf
              read_only: true
            - type: bind
              source: ./telegraf.local
              target: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.d/local.conf
              read_only: true
        depends_on:
            - influxdb
            - pypowerwall

    grafana:
        image: grafana/grafana:9.4.14-ubuntu
        container_name: grafana
        hostname: grafana
        restart: always
        user: "${GRAFANAUSER}"
        volumes:
            - type: bind
              source: ./grafana
              target: /var/lib/grafana
        ports:
            - target: 9000
              published: 9000
              mode: host
        env_file:
            - grafana.env
        depends_on:
            - influxdb

@mcbirse Should we update the user: settings to environmentals as part of this change (similar to #366)?

[jasonacox]

For Grafana version v9.4.14, I created a new version of pypowerwall that includes a grafana-dark style setting. This forces a background color that matches the dark mode. I still can't figure out why transparent wouldn't work but my CSS expertise is on the shallow end of the pool. 🤷

To test - edit pypowerwall.env and add a line at the end:

PW_STYLE=grafana-dark

Edit powerwall.yml to update the pypowerwall version (change t27 to t28 on image line):

    pypowerwall:
        image: jasonacox/pypowerwall:0.6.2t28
        container_name: pypowerwall
        hostname: pypowerwall
        restart: always
        user: "1000:1000"
        ports:
            - target: 8675
              published: 8675
              mode: host
        env_file:
            - pypowerwall.env

Restart stack

./compose-dash.sh up -d

[mcbirse]

@mcbirse Should we update the user: settings to environmentals as part of this change (similar to #366)?

Hi @jasonacox - I added some additional commits to the v2.10.0 branch with those changes. Hope that is okay.

[jasonacox]

Absolutely! Thank you! I'll test and merge today.

[ThePnuts]

Oh interesting. So I've been on the latest version of Grafana since I did my conversion to Flux. Way back then I was having this issue with the background being white, I think except on a Mac, but windows always made it white (still does) #216 (reply in thread)

Ill have to give this a try and see if that works for me too

[jasonacox]

Yes, definitely try the PW_STYLE=grafana-dark setting with the latest pypowerwall container. Hopefully this help you too.

[SCHibbard]

Although this discussion is old, thought I could update all on my experiences with the Powerwall Dashboard using more recent Grafana versions. I have used:
v10.2.2 – saw no issues on any of the PWDB panels. The background of the energy flow animation did not change/
v10.2.3 – messed up ‘Grid Status’ & ‘Self-Powered Panels’ (can’t remember what) so I rolled back to 10.2.2.
v10.4.1 – got warning of depreciated AngularJS (Boom table for ‘Current State’ panel) but all panels seem to function OK.

I have since recreated the ‘Current State’ panel using the new Canvas panel plug-in and it is operating fine. The main reason I did this was to create canvas panels depicting my solar array (I have microinverters & wanted to see each panel’s output). Canvas still has its quirks in the design area, but the panels are working fine for the most part. Need to play with the experimental Pan & Zoom, as the panels do not scale well for phones & tablets.

n.b.: Since I have Enphase microinverters and NOT a Tesla invertor, I have not tested the sting panels!

Next up is making a canvas panel replicating the Power Flow animation panel. I use a reverse proxy to access the panel outside of home, and the dashboard cannot pass on the animation remotely.

[hulkster]

So I futzed around with this.
Disclaimer that while I've semi-customized my Solar Only dashboard, I'm a neophyte when it comes to Grafana.

It was helpful to compare my "production" versus "test" box side-by-side ... so very easy to see any differences.

I was able to push all the way to 10.3.6 ... albeit I had a very minor formatting issue that required changing the font-size in a couple of panels from 36 to 32 ... but this was because I had intentionally made the text as large as possible for the panel.

If I go to 10.4.0 (or higher), I get the Angular warnings that @SCHibbard talked about ... and those "exclamation point triangles" are really annoying to see. Note there's a whole webpage about Angular Depreciation and it appears there some way to disable the warnings (via the .ini file or per panel) but I didn't go down that route. Except for that, the latest 10.4.3 release did seem to work correctly.

BTW, I thought maybe I could set "angularDeprecationUI=false" in grafana.env and that would be somehow passed ... but that didn't work ... see comment about about being being a neophyte with Grafana! ;-)

BTW, I did try pushing all the way to 11.0 ... but I have a vertical bar table that got messed up (and lost its colors) ... but as implied above, this was probably because I was a doofus when I first set it up, so probably did something non-standard.

So that's my initial two cents ... others might give it a shot. 10.3.6 was released a couple of days ago (ditto 10.4.3) ... so while I'm not saying one should be using the latest leading/bleeding edge stuff, 9.1.2 is a couple years old, so might be worthwhile to consider pushing the default to a more recent version ... pending what others much more knowledgeable than me would suggest.

[SCHibbard]

@hulkster: not sure from your post whether you stuck with 10.x or rolled back to 9. In case you stuck with 10.x, attached is a json of dashboard containing a redesigned current-state panel using the canvas visualization rather than the depreciated Boom Table. This will get rid of the warning. Note Canvas was first generally released in V10, so this won't work in 9. It is saved as a library panel when loaded up in Grafana, so you can then call it up in your other dashboards.

As for 11.0, maybe I'm getting too old & risk adverse, but I avoid .0 releases :)
current-state-canvas-panel.json

[hulkster]

@SCHibbard -I thought 10.3.6 was working ... but I forgot to check the centering when full-screen (see my OP!) ... which does not work with 10.x (per my original link, people aren't happy about it ... but sounded like "needed" to be done) so I rolled back to 9.4.14.

This is probably because I'm doing it the "wrong" way ... and while that works for me, pretty obvious I'm in way over my head trying to figure out Grafana stuff ... plus I looked at your current-state panel example and I'm just too far down the learning curve to figure out where to even start.

Regardless, I will futz around with this a bit more (the first link has a CSS hack to get centering for 10.x) ... but I need to get my production system upgraded with 4.x Powerwall and a few other things so I have everything same/stable for further testing.

P.S. I agree @SCHibbard that .0 releases should generally be avoided. But good to look forward to what is coming down the pipe. Awesome that folks like you are looking at the Canvas redesign. Ditto to folks like @jasonacox and @mcbirse who are figuring out what Tesla is up to so things keep working.

[dJOS1475]

Although this discussion is old, thought I could update all on my experiences with the Powerwall Dashboard using more recent Grafana versions. I have used:
v10.2.2 – saw no issues on any of the PWDB panels. The background of the energy flow animation did not change/

Howdy, what's the best method to non-destructively update to v10.2.2?

I tried updating powerwall.yml as per below, but the version never changed and the influxdb part started throwing address already in use errors.

grafana/grafana:10.2.2-ubuntu

I used the automated setup process in an Ubuntu VM so my config is pretty stock. I'm wanting to update as I have some Hubitat Home Automation Dashboards that need v10 or better to work correctly.

[SCHibbard]

@dJOS1475: Easiest is to edit powerwall.yml as you did, but then run ./setup.sh instead of manually running compose. That will take care of container shutdowns, pull in the new Grafana version and restart containers after. The old Grafana container will still be there after, but not running. If things don't work out as you'd like, just change powerwall.yml back and run setup,.sh again. Docker will see the previous version's container and use it again. Note if you run the dashboard's upgrade.sh after, it may overwrite your changes. If so, just modify the yml file after the upgrade is finished and re-run setup.sh.

[hulkster]

I futzed around with this a bit more and didn't make much progress. The text centering issue mentioned in the OP would require some work, so I just pushed to the latest 9.x release (9.4.17) and everything seems to work fine. I.e. I took the lazy approach since eventually smart folks will upgrade the dashboard to work with 10/11.x and then I'll use that as a starting template match what I have. A couple of screenshots below from my customized dashboard showing how things look for the first 9 months and my peak day so far.

BTW, among the myriad of things that Powerwall is handy for is generating monthly stats to feed into my spreadsheet to compare actual output to expected output - see attached spreadsheet. Any comments/suggestions on that appreciated BTW.
2024_06_01_Solar_Analysis.xlsx

[mmunsch]

@SCHibbard thanks for this updated current state panel. I got the Powerwall Dashboard working on my Unraid NAS and the Grafana version available in community apps is v11.1.0. v11 was not happy with the deprecated boom table plugin and threw me errors until I added a variable to bypass the deprecation for now but that won't work past v11, the JSON you provided allowed me to get rid of the boom table from the dashboard.

[SCHibbard]

Glad it worked for you!
---Scott---