SigenStorPanel

A 10.1″ touchscreen wall panel for a Sigenergy SigenStor solar and battery system.

It runs on the Elecrow CrowPanel Advanced 10.1″ ESP32-P4 HMI, a 1024×600 IPS touchscreen with WiFi. It shows:

• live power flow and battery state;
• solar generation against forecast;
• consumption and the grid;
• where the day's energy went, and what it all cost.

Everything is set up on the glass itself: WiFi, the data source and every setting. There is no setup network to join and no web page to find.

It is the big sibling of SigenStorPuck, which shows the same data on small round and landscape AMOLED boards. The two share their data layer.

Status: early-release testing. It runs on a real board (hardware revision V1.2):

• Confirmed: the display, touch and WiFi; the server, Modbus and solar forecast paths; updates over WiFi; and the room sensor.
• Not yet tried: the Home Assistant path on a real Home Assistant, and the BOOT button.

Three ways to get data: read this first

The panel can take its readings from one of three places. It matters which, because some screens and features need a particular one.

Modbus TCP, talking straight to your plant. No other software is involved. The panel reads your inverter or gateway directly over your own network. This is the default for a new installation.

SigenStorDisplay Server. A separate companion application that manages and logs a Sigenergy plant, which the panel can then read from. It unlocks:

• the Flows and Cost screens;
• stepping back through past days;
• complete daily charts.

SigenStorDisplay has not been released yet. The panel already has full support for it, ready for when it is. Until then, those parts are unavailable.

Home Assistant. The panel reads chosen sensors through Home Assistant's REST API. This suits a home where Home Assistant already collects from the inverter, battery and meters: the panel reads what Home Assistant has, rather than becoming another Modbus client. You pick which sensor supplies each figure from Home Assistant's own list, so this works with any inverter and battery integration, not only Sigenergy's.

What works with which

	Modbus	SigenStorDisplay Server	Home Assistant
Power screen	●	●	●
Battery screen	●	●	●
Solar screen	●	●	◐ by default; ● with a forecast set up
Home use screen	◐ headline and live draw only	●	◐ headline and live draw only
Grid screen	● frequency and voltage need an inverter added	●	◐ no frequency or voltage
Energy flows screen	—	●	—
Cost screen	—	●	—
Solar forecast	● calculated on the panel	● from the server	● off, from the panel, or from Home Assistant sensors
Today's charts	◐ from when the panel was switched on	● the whole day, even after a restart	◐ restored from Home Assistant's history where it has one; otherwise from switch-on
Step back through past days	—	● up to 7 days	—
Tariff rates and savings	—	●	—

● full · ◐ partial · — not available

On Modbus and Home Assistant, the Energy flows and Cost screens are removed altogether rather than left showing dashes, so you get five screens instead of seven.

The screens

Swipe left and right across the glass to move between screens. The row of dots near the bottom shows how many there are and which one you are on. The auto-cycle can also step through them on its own (see Screens under Settings).

Swipe up from anywhere to open Settings. It slides up over the screen you were on. Swipe down, or tap Done, to close it. It also closes by itself after a minute untouched.

Power: what is happening right now. Solar at the top, battery and home to the right, grid and EV to the left, all around the plant in the middle. Dots run along each leg in the direction the power is going: slowly near zero, faster as it rises towards 20 kW. The bar around the edge is your battery's state of charge.Works on all three sources when the values are available.	Battery: charge level, kWh stored, and what it is doing now, over the day's charge curve. Health and temperature on the right.Works on all three sources. On Modbus, temperature needs an inverter added under Devices; on Home Assistant, each figure needs its sensor chosen.
Solar: generated so far today and live output, over the day's curve with the forecast behind it. The forecast total and what is still to come are on the right. The bar around the edge is progress against the day's forecast.Works on all three sources.	Home use: everything used today, with what is being drawn now and how self-sufficient you have been.Partial on Modbus and Home Assistant. The total, live figure and locally recorded curve work. The breakdown by source needs a SigenStorDisplay Server.
Grid: imported and exported today, live frequency and voltage, and the day's import above the line and export below it.Works on all three sources. Frequency and voltage need an inverter added on Modbus, and are not available from Home Assistant.	Energy flows: where today's energy came from and where it went. Sources down the left, destinations down the right, one ribbon per path.SigenStorDisplay Server only.
Cost: what you have saved today and the unit rate you are paying right now.SigenStorDisplay Server only.

Behind the battery, solar, home and grid figures is that day's own curve:

• Modbus: the curves fill from when the panel was switched on.
• Home Assistant: the panel restores today's curves from Home Assistant's history after its first successful reading, a two-hour window at a time between live readings. Where there is no history, the curves fill from switch-on.
• SigenStorDisplay Server: the whole day is fetched, so the curves are complete straight away.

Past days

With a SigenStorDisplay Server, − and + buttons sit in the bottom corners of every screen except Power:

• − steps back a day, up to seven days.
• + steps forward again.
• The day you are looking at is named just above the page dots.
• Left alone for two minutes, the panel goes back to today by itself.

The Power screen always stays live. On Modbus and Home Assistant there is no stored history to step back into, so the buttons do not appear.

When something needs attention

Problems show as a line across the top of whichever screen is up, with the screen still visible underneath. Tap the line to open the settings page that fixes it.

Colour	Means
Grey	Something is in progress: connecting to WiFi, setting the clock, waiting for the first reading. It passes by itself.
Amber	Something needs setting up: no WiFi, or no data source configured yet.
Red	Set up, but refused or unreachable: a rejected code or token, or a source that does not answer.

Installing

1. Flash the firmware

Plug the panel's UART USB-C port into a computer, switch it on, and open this page in Chrome or Edge:

→ Install SigenStorPanel

It flashes over WebSerial, with no flashing tool to download. Safari and Firefox cannot do this, and neither can anything on an iPhone or iPad.

The panel's USB port goes through a WCH CH340 serial chip, and a Mac needs WCH's driver first. Without it, the panel's serial port does not appear:

1. Download CH34xVCPDriver.dmg from WCH's ch34xser_macos repository on GitHub.
2. Open it and drag CH34xVCPDriver into Applications.
3. Open CH34xVCPDriver from Applications and click Install.
4. Allow it in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Driver Extensions.

Windows and Linux normally have the driver already.

If the installer cannot connect, hold BOOT, press and release RST, let go of BOOT, and try again.

After the first flash, the panel can update itself (see Firmware under Settings). One exception: a panel on 0.1.0 cannot update itself, because that version's updater crashes on the download. Flash it once more from the page above; from 0.1.1 on, updates install over WiFi.

2. Join it to your WiFi

On first boot the panel looks for networks and lists them.

1. Tap your network.
2. Type its password on the on-screen keyboard and tap Join.

The panel remembers up to five networks. With more than one in range, it joins the strongest. To add another later, open WiFi in Settings.

3. Choose and configure a data source

Open Settings (swipe up), then Data. Choose the source at the top. A change of source takes effect after a restart; the panel offers one.

Direct Modbus

1. Choose Modbus.
2. Tap Set and enter the IP address of your inverter or gateway.
3. Optionally, tap Edit by Devices. Add your inverter for battery temperature, grid frequency and voltage, and the daily totals. Add a charger, if you have one, for EV power. Use the IDs the Sigen app lists. The plant itself is 247 unless you have changed it.

Do two things outside the panel, or it will not be able to connect:

• In the Sigen app, allow Modbus TCP access for the panel's IP address. Access is granted per address, and a device that has not been added gets no reply. The panel's address is on the Device page.
• In your router, give the panel a fixed (reserved) IP address. Otherwise the permission you just granted stops working the next time addresses are handed out.

Data should appear within a few seconds.

SigenStorDisplay Server

Once it is available, choose Server. The server's Admin page gives each display unit a server address and a kiosk code. Enter them one of two ways:

• Set server and Set code, typed separately. Dashes and capitals in the code don't matter.
• Enter link, for the whole enrolment link in one go.

Home Assistant

You need:

• a Home Assistant the panel can reach;
• energy sensors from any integration;
• a long-lived access token.

To make the token, create a dedicated local non-administrator user in Home Assistant for the panel. Sign in as that user, open its profile, and create a long-lived access token. Avoid using an administrator's everyday token. Revoking this one later removes the panel's access at once.

1. Choose Home Assistant.
2. Set address: the base URL, with the scheme and port, such as http://homeassistant.local:8123.
3. Set token: type or paste the token. It is stored on the panel only, and shown afterwards as its last few characters.
4. Sensors: Choose. Tap each figure and pick its sensor from Home Assistant's own list. The list is filtered to sensors in a unit that figure can use, and shows each one's current value, so you can see which is live.

The panel sends one POST /api/template per reading. Home Assistant answers with only the chosen sensors and their units, so the panel never downloads every state. In this mode the panel never opens a Modbus connection.

Settings

Everything below is in the sheet that slides up over the screens. It has seven pages, Display, Sound, Screens, WiFi, Data, Solar and Device, and you swipe left and right between them.

Most changes take effect straight away. The ones that need a restart are marked ↻. Changing one puts up a bar listing what is waiting, with a button to restart.

Display

Sound

Short, quiet chimes through the panel's speakers. They stay silent in the overnight hours set under Display, and while the room sensor sees nobody, so they are only heard by someone who is there. Switching a sound on plays it, so you know which is which.

Screens

WiFi

Data

Solar

With a SigenStorDisplay Server, the server supplies the forecast and there is nothing to set here. On Modbus, the panel calculates it from the settings below. On Home Assistant, choose Off, This panel (calculated from the settings below), or From HA (the forecast sensors chosen under Data, Sensors).

Device

Troubleshooting

Across the top	What it means
No WiFi	No saved network is in range. Tap to choose one.
Connecting to WiFi...	Joining your network. It should pass in a few seconds.
… not set up	On WiFi, but the chosen source is missing its address, code or token. Tap to enter it.
Setting the clock...	The panel needs the time from the internet before it can make a secure connection. It passes by itself once your network lets it reach a time server.
Waiting for data...	Configured, but nothing has arrived yet. Normal just after a restart.
The server rejected this panel's code	Server only. The kiosk code was revoked. Create a new one on the server and enter it.
Home Assistant rejected the token	Home Assistant answered 401 or 403. Make a new long-lived token and check that its user is still active.
Cannot reach …	The source did not answer, with the reason in brackets. Check its address. On Modbus, also check the panel is still allowed in the Sigen app.

If a Modbus setup worked and then stopped, the usual cause is that the panel's IP address changed. That quietly invalidates the permission granted in the Sigen app. Reserve the address in your router and grant it again.

Holding BOOT for 5 seconds restarts the panel. The slide switch on the side cuts power outright.

Room sensor (optional)

A Waveshare HMMD mmWave sensor lets the panel switch its backlight off when nobody is in the room and back on when someone walks in. Without one, nothing changes.

It plugs into the UART1 socket beside the WiFi module, a 4-pin HY2.0 (2.0 mm, Grove-style) connector. TX and RX cross over:

UART1 pin	Sensor pin
1 RX (GPIO48)	TX
2 TX (GPIO47)	RX
3 3V3	3V3
4 GND	GND

The sensor's fifth pin, OT2, is not needed. A sensor that goes silent is ignored, so a loose wire cannot leave the panel dark. Set how long the room must be empty under Display. More detail, including an alternative on the IO breakout header, is in docs/HARDWARE.md.

Hardware

Board	Elecrow CrowPanel Advanced 10.1″ ESP32-P4 HMI, V1.2 tested
Display	1024×600 IPS, EK79007 over 2-lane MIPI-DSI, PWM backlight
Touch	GT911, I2C
MCU	ESP32-P4 (silicon v1.3 tested), 32 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash
WiFi	through the on-board ESP32-C6 over SDIO (esp-hosted)
USB serial	WCH CH340, needing WCH's driver on a Mac

Pins, timings and what is confirmed so far are in docs/HARDWARE.md.

Building it yourself

The firmware builds with PlatformIO:

pio run -e panel -t upload -t monitor

Screens are developed against canned readings on the desktop rather than by reflashing, and every screenshot above came from that simulator. It needs SDL2 (brew install sdl2):

pio run -e sim && .pio/build/sim/program

Keyboard controls:

• n and p change the fixture.
• [ and ] change the screen.
• s opens Settings.
• d shows the parsed data behind the screen.

--shot <dir> renders every screen and settings page to images. --selftest runs the checks that need no hardware, including:

• the Home Assistant template, sensor list and unit handling;
• the Modbus register decoder;
• the history ring;
• the solar forecast model;
• the overnight window;
• the room sensor's output.

How releases, the installer page and updates are published is in docs/RELEASING.md.

Home Assistant scope

Home Assistant provides:

• live power and battery values;
• today's totals, for the sensors you choose;
• an optional solar forecast, from Home Assistant sensors or the panel's own model.

One optional history fetch restores today's charts after a restart. Without usable history, the charts fill from switch-on.

Deliberately not implemented: browsing previous days, the detailed source-to-sink flows, tariffs and costs.