WHAT IS SOLARPOWERLOG?
======================

The program's purpose is to track and log data from photo-voltaic inverters,
collect power data and store them. Also a purpose is to provide an interface
to extract the data, allowing applications like web site stats of the system.

Currently, solarpowerlog is working with the Sputnik Solarmax inverter, but the
framework supports any kind of inverters and even other energy generation systems.
(Some coding required -- all it needs is to create the inverter class)

Solarpowerlog is mature software and (for my purposes) feature-complete.

As with the nature of FOSS, feel free to contribute new features. The preferrded
method is pull requests on github: https://github.com/coldtobi/solarpowerlog


HELP WANTED
===========

Any idea? Some programming skills? Missing a feature? Some spare time?
You're at the right place! Any contribution is very welcome.
Don't forget, this is the spirit of open source!

Especially this fields needs support:
- Write some user documentation.
- Support for other inverters beside the Sputnik ones (to test the code, you
  should have access to one)
- Programming for some tools making use of the data.
- Documentation (manuals, code documentation, examples, ....)
- and bug crushing. (not that I am aware of bugs, but I'm sure they are hiding)

INSTALLATION
============

Before compiling yourself, solarpowerlog is available in Debian and derivates,
like Ubuntu. Look for the package "solarpowerlog".

GETTING THE SOURCE
==================

You either need to grab the sources as tarball from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/solarpowerlog/files/solarpowerlog/
or you can use the git repository to get the latest source.

The repository is located at:
git://solarpowerlog.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/solarpowerlog/solarpowerlog
and the command
git clone git://solarpowerlog.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/solarpowerlog/solarpowerlog
should get you a copy.

solarpowerlog has currently those main branches:

trunk		-- development trunk
debian  	-- repository to store debian packaging files
upstream/x.yy   -- snapshot for the releases (starting at 0.21)
(master 	-- this was an ancient branch for the last release -- please do not use it)

I recommend using the repository instead the relased tarballs. If you want to
contribue, please make sure that you work on trunk.

BUILDING
========

solarpowerlog uses autotools.

To build solarpowerlog, just use the usual
./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make

for a guide, please see the file INSTALL. (it will be created by ./bootstrap)

Build-dependencies:
===================

To build under debian, you need to have the following packages installed:

Minimal:
autoconf libtool libconfig++-dev libboost-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev libbost-program-options-dev
libdbi-dev

Full-fledged (additional)
liblog4cxx-dev libcppdb-dev

Note: On Debian systems, apt-get build-dep solarpowerlog will get you started.

CONFIGURATION FILE
==================

Please see the directory example_confs for examples how to configure solarpowerlog.
You can specify the config file to be used with the -c parameter:
solarpowerlog -c <path-to-config-file>

