My supplier discontinued the high quality ESP32 boards I was using so I am struggling to find suitable replacements. I can still find replacements (Ordered directly from Espressif) at double the current price which means either I need to up the price by another R150 or I need to move over to SmartDeyeDongle V5. And before anyone points out there are lots of cheap clones, I have tested several and decided they are not worth the struggle, they are poor quality built to be as cheap as possible and have terrible wifi range. I have a whole box of cheap clones sitting and gathering dust, they are not suitable for production deployment. The circuit needs to outlast your inverter with a 5 year warranty. I suspect most inverters will easily operate longer than 10 years.
I am not building circuits to make a huge profit but ideally the project needs to pay for itself, which means that after all the various fees and costs there still needs to be a little cash left so I can invest into improvements and forks in the road. Developing and iterating the design of a circuit is not a cheap. Mistakes and experiments are part of the process and there should be funds to overcome failures.
I will probably get some replacements circuits at a higher price in the interim, and will switch over to the new V5 SmartDeyeDongle when the firmware has been tested a bit more. I am making good progress aiming to have stock of V5 in January.
Both V4 and V5 circuits will continue to receive version updates and will have identical functions. The V5 circuit has some extra LED lights that light up when data is sent/received so it is a lot easier to see when it is working. The circuit is a single unit with components on both sides fitting into a small generic case.