SIGNUX PAN01

The PAN01 powers a piece of field equipment where the mains does not reach. It is a closed assembly: solar panel, battery, charging electronics and folding bracket, all in one piece that is unfolded, clamped to a pole and working.

There are three sizes. They are chosen by the load of the equipment they will power and by how many days they have to last without sun.

The rest is common to all three: output of 9 to 12.6 V at up to 10 A, 90 % discharge depth, service from −30 to 60 °C, IP67 protection, a 1.5 m output cable and status readout over RS485.

• •Solar kit with its bracket
• •Two U bolts
• •Two bracket fastening plates
• •One DC cable
• •One hex wrench
• •Six M6 screws
• •Four nuts, four washers and four spring washers
• •One installation guide

The box does not include the spanner for the U bolt nuts: they are M10 and take a 17 mm spanner. The hex wrench that is included is only for the M6 screws of the fastening plates.

One person can do the mounting and it needs no civil works: no trench, no buried cable, nothing to switch off. A vertical pole 80 to 114 mm in diameter is required, along with a 17 mm spanner and zip ties to gather the spare cable.

It takes seven steps, and the order matters: the bracket is assembled with the kit lying flat, not once it is up on the pole. The circled numbers in the drawings — ①, ②, ③ — mark movements, not parts.

Lay the kit flat and face down, with the panel against the ground and the folded bracket in view, on a flat and clean surface. It is advisable to put the box itself or a blanket underneath, because the panel will be resting on its good face and any grit will scratch it.

Before going on, check that the output cable is clear and that it will not be trapped between the bracket and the frame when unfolding.

The bracket opens in two movements, in this order:

• •① Lift the anchor frame by pulling it upwards: it turns on the hinge along the lower edge.
• •② Swing the triangular arm outwards until it stops.

The two plates are what make the bracket rigid: until they are in place, the arm folds back on its own. One goes on each side.

• •Line up the holes at the top of the plate with the inner holes of the bracket arm.
• •Put in the six M6 screws.
• •Tighten with the supplied hex wrench.
• •Repeat on the opposite side and check that both arms are left at the same angle.

Panel and battery are joined by a sealed connector that cannot be got wrong: it has an orientation key and goes in one way only. Do not force it if it will not go in; turn it until the key lines up.

Screw the outer collar fully home. That is what compresses the seal and what keeps the IP67: half screwed in, the joint is not sealed even though it makes contact.

With the bracket assembled, lift the unit onto the pole. It takes tubes 80 to 114 mm in diameter.

• •Wrap the tube with the two U bolts.
• •Put the threaded ends through the holes in the bracket plate.
• •On each stud, in this order: flat washer, spring washer and M10 nut.
• •Tighten the four nuts with the 17 mm spanner.

It is advisable to tighten crosswise and gradually, giving each nut one turn in sequence. If one is tightened fully before the others, the bracket ends up skewed on the tube and there is then no way to straighten it.

This is where the mechanical mounting ends. Before the final tightening, turn the unit on the pole and leave it facing the right way.

The same as for any other photovoltaic installation: facing the midday sun and with no shade over it at any time of day — not from trees, not from a building, and not from the mast itself if something is mounted higher up. A shadow crossing the panel for a few hours a day costs far more autonomy than it looks.

Fix the equipment to be powered to the same pole, below the kit, and connect it to the DC output cable, which is 1.5 m long.

If there is spare cable, gather it with zip ties against the mast rather than leaving it hanging: a loose cable in the wind eventually breaks at the gland, and that is a fault nobody sees until the equipment loses its supply.

With everything connected, look at the three indicator lights. What each one says is in the next section.

If one kit does not cover the load, several can be put in parallel on the same equipment, up to eight.

The unit carries three indicator lights together, under the panel. They say, in this order, whether the panel is charging, how the battery is, and whether output is available.

The unit speaks Modbus RTU over RS485. Reading it tells you live what comes in from the panel, what goes out to the load, how the battery is doing and what voltage each cell is at.

The measurement areas are read with function 04, and the counter and parameter areas with 03. The unit also lets the parameter areas be written.

The measurements live from 0x0200 to 0x0221 and in the 0x0300 block; the cumulative counters, in the 0x0400 area.

Two things are worth knowing before programming anything. First: if you ask for more registers than the block holds, the unit returns the ones it has and says nothing — asking for forty from 0x0200 returns thirty-four. Second: past 0x0303 the cell block returns leftover memory that looks like data and is not.

If it answers nothing at all, before doubting the baud rate it is worth swapping the A and B wires.

The signs: in 0x0207 and 0x0209 discharge is positive and charging negative; in 0x0208 and 0x0218 photovoltaic discharge is positive, and in 0x0219 it is the mains discharge.

The sixteen temperatures go in pairs, one signed byte each, from −50 to 125 °C. A channel with no sensor fitted reads −50.

The timestamp in 0x0213 and 0x0214 is a 32-bit integer in UTC seconds: the first is the high half and the second the low half.

In 0x021F the value 0 is normal. The highest bit marks temperature protection, the next marks discharge protection and the lowest, charging protection; each number from 0 to 127 identifies a cause.

Cells and temperature probes have their own areas. The origin documents them as ranges, because how many there are depends on the unit: the last address to read is worked out from the count given by the first register of each area.

When the number of cells exceeds what fits in one reply, they are asked for in several packets. Cells above 255 are in the 0x07xx area.

The probes from 0x020A to 0x0211 are the board ones. In this area, as there, the range is −50 to 125 °C and a probe that is not fitted reads −50.

This area is only used when the total number of cells exceeds 255.

The 0x04xx area is read with function 03. It gathers the battery totals, the energy counters, the rental clock and the encoding registers.

All 32-bit values go in pairs and in network order: the first register is the high half and the second the low half.

Rental days accept 0 to 3000. The thirteen encoding registers hold 26 bytes, two per register.

The four energy counters are updated once a day, at 00:00: the daily one holds the previous day and the cumulative one everything before that cut.

In 0x0425, the value 1 is automatic and 0 is forced shutdown.

The 0x08xx area holds the battery management system parameters: protection thresholds, calibrations and identity data. They are read with function 03.

Temperatures in this area go as everywhere else in the unit: two signed bytes in one register, from −50 to 106 °C.

The ranges each parameter accepts: 1.00 to 655.00 A for currents, 1.5000 to 4.4000 V for cell voltages, 2.0 to 2000.0 V for total voltages and 1.0 to 100.0 s for delays.

The device identifier is 48 bits across three registers, meant to carry a MAC address.

The 0x089x area configures the up to thirty-two chained controls. It is read with function 03.

In each register, the eight high bits enable probes 1 to 8, from lowest to highest. Of the eight low bits, the upper four give the number of cells of the first sampling block and the lower four, that of the second.

The 0x06xx area is factory data. The origin documents it like this:

In 0x0608 the high byte is the address, from 1 to 247. Of the low bits, two give the parity — 0 none, 1 odd, 2 even — and the remaining six the baud rate in multiples of 2400 bps: a 4 is 9600. The change does not take effect until the unit is restarted.

Four registers are not a number but one bit per thing. The origin breaks them down like this.

In 0x0200 the normal value is 0x00D0.

In 0x0201 the normal value is 0x0000: with the battery in order, not one bit.

The 0x0202 is not a bit field but two bytes: the high one is the fault code and the low one its level, from 1 to 3, where 3 is the most serious. A code of 0 is "no fault". If several coincide, only the most serious is reported.

In 0x0818 the default value is 0x07.

Which way the current is flowing cannot be worked out from which register reads zero: panel current and load current are measured separately and can both be non-zero at once. What tells you is the sign of the net battery current.

• •0x0207 positive: the battery is discharging.
• •0x0207 negative: the battery is charging.
• •And always, 0x0207 is the load current minus the panel current.

The power in 0x0205 is the battery power, not the panel power: it is the absolute net current times the voltage, in whole watts. The power the panel delivers has no register of its own and is worked out by multiplying 0x0217 by 0x0218.

The cycles the battery has done come from the cumulative charge Ah divided by the nominal capacity of the model.

The parameters in the 0x04xx, 0x06xx and 0x08xx areas can be written, but they are not usage settings: they are the thresholds the management system protects the battery with. A wrong write moves a safety threshold, the unit accepts it without warning and there is no comfortable way back.