New Morningstar PS-30M gen3 solar controller
Update: much of the grief described was due to a bad firmware file which Morningstar posted on their website. They apparently posted a very old v1 firmware, marked as v5. They themselves has issues with it when they loaded it on their own units. After getting and loading a correct version of the firmware, the controller itself is behaving much better. The documentation and MSView issues described still apply, though.
(yea, I know this may sound like an unreasonable customer rant to some, but I assure you that when I began reporting these issues to Morningstar 6 weeks ago, I did so with the intention of helping them get a newly released (Jan2017) product right. I thought they'd be very interested in bugs in a new product, before they started affecting customers. They didn't seem to care much. Everyone makes mistakes, it's how you handle them that proves your mettle. Morningstar has failed.)
Based on their reputation, I recently bought one of the new Morningstar PS-30M gen3 controllers. The new ones have programmable settings, a graphical LCD display, communications capability (Modbus, Morningstar MSView), are compact, and have a clean look. Sounds great, right? I thought so too, so got one for my RV.
I have to say, it's not nearly ready for prime time. It has significant issues, which Morningstar is aware of, and seems in no hurry to correct.
If you turn the high voltage disconnect (HVD) function off, it will act like it's charging, but isn't. It fails to do the most basic function of a charge controller. (I tried turning it off, because even if set .2V higher than the equalize voltage, it can trigger and unexpectedly turn off the load)
The charging settings on the controller don't have the range to properly support the recommended values for Trojan T-105 batteries, one of the most common deep cycle ones available.
Their MSView software doesn't support it correctly - you can't even download the controller's config, then upload it without an error. MSView hasn't been updated since January.
The documentation is at best inconsistent, and at worst simply wrong. They call the same setting by multiple names - a setting may be called one thing on the controller, a different thing in the documentation, and by two (!) other names in MSView. Good luck sorting out what's what.
For example, for the most basic setting of a charge controller, their Modbus doc calls it "Regulation voltage." The user manual calls it "Absorption stage (voltage)." MSView calls it _both_, in different places. It gets worse with the more complex settings - "Reference charge limit", "Maximum regulation limit", and "Max battery V" are used for the same thing in different places. Beyond just the settings, the functions are also confused, in some places they refer to "solar disconnect," in others "battery disconnect" for the same thing. Someone at MS must understand how these things work, but it's not the people who write the documentation. There's no consistency at all.
Yesterday, they posted some new firmware, which they said was "v5", and which is supposed to fix at least one of the above issues, plus several others not mentioned. When I went to install it using their MSLoad software, it reported that it was "PWM Firmware update v00.0beta, 16.Feb.2016" Uh, what? I reported that to them, and they said they screwed up the build (and the QA, obviously), and later posted a version which did say it was V5. Great.
I installed the new "v5" firmware (MSLoad reported success), after which the controller reported it was running "FW:v1", and MSView said it was running "Firmware Version v01.04.01". Uh, what???
To top it off, the new firmware broke things which worked before, only making it worse - can't even upload a config created in MSView now, it stops about 1/3 of the way in with an error (worked fine before the new firmware, except for the bug mentioned above). I can only hope that it can be programmed with new firmware if and when MS gets their act together. And, the controller now has an alarm which can't be cleared. An obvious conclusion is that their developers are incompetent and working with "spaghetti code," where fixing one thing breaks another.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to work correctly, after it's been in development for over a year. This should be a "set it and forget it" product. A $55 made in China Grape controller from the local Home Depot would work better. I expected more from Morningstar, based on both reputation and price.
Arrrgh.
TL;DR; - Morningstar lacks adult supervision, don't buy anything which hasn't been out at least a year or two.
(yea, I know this may sound like an unreasonable customer rant to some, but I assure you that when I began reporting these issues to Morningstar 6 weeks ago, I did so with the intention of helping them get a newly released (Jan2017) product right. I thought they'd be very interested in bugs in a new product, before they started affecting customers. They didn't seem to care much. Everyone makes mistakes, it's how you handle them that proves your mettle. Morningstar has failed.)
Based on their reputation, I recently bought one of the new Morningstar PS-30M gen3 controllers. The new ones have programmable settings, a graphical LCD display, communications capability (Modbus, Morningstar MSView), are compact, and have a clean look. Sounds great, right? I thought so too, so got one for my RV.
I have to say, it's not nearly ready for prime time. It has significant issues, which Morningstar is aware of, and seems in no hurry to correct.
If you turn the high voltage disconnect (HVD) function off, it will act like it's charging, but isn't. It fails to do the most basic function of a charge controller. (I tried turning it off, because even if set .2V higher than the equalize voltage, it can trigger and unexpectedly turn off the load)
The charging settings on the controller don't have the range to properly support the recommended values for Trojan T-105 batteries, one of the most common deep cycle ones available.
Their MSView software doesn't support it correctly - you can't even download the controller's config, then upload it without an error. MSView hasn't been updated since January.
The documentation is at best inconsistent, and at worst simply wrong. They call the same setting by multiple names - a setting may be called one thing on the controller, a different thing in the documentation, and by two (!) other names in MSView. Good luck sorting out what's what.
For example, for the most basic setting of a charge controller, their Modbus doc calls it "Regulation voltage." The user manual calls it "Absorption stage (voltage)." MSView calls it _both_, in different places. It gets worse with the more complex settings - "Reference charge limit", "Maximum regulation limit", and "Max battery V" are used for the same thing in different places. Beyond just the settings, the functions are also confused, in some places they refer to "solar disconnect," in others "battery disconnect" for the same thing. Someone at MS must understand how these things work, but it's not the people who write the documentation. There's no consistency at all.
Yesterday, they posted some new firmware, which they said was "v5", and which is supposed to fix at least one of the above issues, plus several others not mentioned. When I went to install it using their MSLoad software, it reported that it was "PWM Firmware update v00.0beta, 16.Feb.2016" Uh, what? I reported that to them, and they said they screwed up the build (and the QA, obviously), and later posted a version which did say it was V5. Great.
I installed the new "v5" firmware (MSLoad reported success), after which the controller reported it was running "FW:v1", and MSView said it was running "Firmware Version v01.04.01". Uh, what???
To top it off, the new firmware broke things which worked before, only making it worse - can't even upload a config created in MSView now, it stops about 1/3 of the way in with an error (worked fine before the new firmware, except for the bug mentioned above). I can only hope that it can be programmed with new firmware if and when MS gets their act together. And, the controller now has an alarm which can't be cleared. An obvious conclusion is that their developers are incompetent and working with "spaghetti code," where fixing one thing breaks another.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to work correctly, after it's been in development for over a year. This should be a "set it and forget it" product. A $55 made in China Grape controller from the local Home Depot would work better. I expected more from Morningstar, based on both reputation and price.
Arrrgh.
TL;DR; - Morningstar lacks adult supervision, don't buy anything which hasn't been out at least a year or two.
