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Getting Started

Welcome to SETI AI. This guide takes you from your first login to a live, deployed workflow with real device data and working notifications — in about fifteen minutes. No coding required. If you get stuck, every section links to a deeper page in the wiki.

1. Logging in

SETI AI is reached through your browser at your organization's address (for example, seti.hanger8200.com). You'll land on the Sign In screen — the dark command-center login with the SETI Power lightning mark.

  1. Enter your username and password.
  2. Click Sign In.

A few things worth knowing:

  • Your session is secured with an encrypted, server-side cookie and stays valid for up to 7 days, so you won't be asked to log in every visit.
  • After 5 failed attempts the account is temporarily locked for 15 minutes — a protection against password guessing, not a bug.
  • Passwords are stored using industry-standard bcrypt hashing and are never visible to anyone, including administrators. Full details on the Security & Trust page.

If you don't have an account yet, ask your administrator to create one. Administrators add users from the Admin panel and assign each person a role: admin (full control), user (build and operate), or viewer (read-only). Roles are enforced on the server, so a viewer genuinely cannot change anything, no matter what.

2. The main surfaces

Once you're in, SETI AI presents one unified shell with four surfaces along the top. Here's what each is for:

Surface What it's for Deep dive
Command Center Your daily cockpit — chat with Bob and Bill, browse the knowledge base, watch agent and host status, and see a live activity feed. Command Center
Node Editor The visual canvas where you build automation by dragging and wiring nodes together. Node Editor
SETI Stack / Dashboard A composable board of 40+ analytics widgets you arrange yourself, including the live Power Analytics views. Dashboard Widgets
Setup One dense configuration panel for notifications, alert thresholds, inverter connections and charge schedules. This page, Step 5

Admins also see an Admin panel for user management and audit logs.

Take a minute to click through all four. They share the same warm-gold "noir" theme, so you'll always know where you are.

3. Your first 15 minutes

A suggested tour to get comfortable fast:

Minutes 0–3 — Get oriented. Open the Command Center. Say hello to Bob in the chat panel — type something like "What's the current battery state of charge?" Bob answers from live telemetry and cites where the number came from. Notice the agent status cards and the host system panel refreshing on their own.

Minutes 3–6 — Look at live power. Switch to the Dashboard / Power Analytics surface. Open the Power Overview and Inverter Hub. Everything you see is real data — solar production, battery SoC, grid flow. If a metric shows as "driver pending," that just means that data source isn't connected yet; SETI AI never invents numbers. See Power Analytics.

Minutes 6–10 — Explore the canvas. Open the Node Editor. Pan around the infinite canvas (drag the background) and zoom (scroll). Open the node palette and browse the 14 categories — Input, AI, Energy, Logic, Output and more. Drag a couple of nodes out just to feel it. Don't worry about breaking anything; nothing runs until you deploy. See Node Editor.

Minutes 10–15 — Build something real. Follow Step 4 below to wire and deploy your first workflow.

4. Building your first workflow

Let's build a simple, genuinely useful automation: "If the battery state of charge drops below 30%, send an alert." This touches an energy node, a logic node and a notification node — the three building blocks of almost everything in SETI AI.

  1. Open the Node Editor.
  2. Add a battery monitor. From the palette's Energy category, drag a Battery Monitor node onto the canvas. This reads live state-of-charge, voltage, current and temperature. (See Energy Nodes for the full list.)
  3. Add a threshold check. From the Logic category, drag a Threshold node. Set its operator to < and its threshold to 30.
  4. Wire them. Drag from the battery monitor's soc output port to the threshold node's value input port. A glowing wire connects them.
  5. Add an alert. From the Output category, drag a Notify (alert) node. In its fields, write a message like "Battery SoC below 30% — check the pack." Wire the threshold node's trigger output into the notify node.
  6. Save it. Give the workflow a name (e.g. Low Battery Alert) and save. Workflows are stored safely in the database against your account.
  7. Deploy it. Click Deploy. You can run it once (one-shot) or on a schedule — for example, every 5m to check continuously. Scheduled workflows run on the server, 24/7, even after you close the browser. See the Workflow Engine.

That's it — you've built a real monitoring automation. Watch its run status and per-node logs stream live as it executes.

Tip: The Node Editor has a built-in debugger. Press D to enter debug mode, double-click a node to set a breakpoint, then run to pause and inspect exactly what each node produced. Great for understanding how data flows. Undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) gives you 50 levels of safety net.

5. Connecting your first inverter or data source

Live data is what makes SETI AI sing. Connecting hardware takes a few minutes in Setup.

SETI AI supports six inverter brands out of the box: Victron, SMA, Sol-Ark, Enphase, SolarEdge and Schneider. Each connects a little differently — some over a cloud API key, some over a local network (Modbus TCP) connection. See Inverter Drivers for the specifics of your brand.

To connect one:

  1. Open the Setup surface and find the Inverter Setup section.
  2. Choose your brand.
  3. Enter the connection details for your equipment:
    • Cloud-connected brands (SMA, SolarEdge, Enphase cloud, Schneider EcoStruxure) need an API key and a site/plant/system ID from that vendor's portal.
    • Locally-connected brands (Sol-Ark, Enphase local gateway, Schneider Modbus) need the device's IP address on your network.
    • Victron connects through the VRM cloud and is the reference integration.
  4. Save. Within moments, your solar, battery and grid widgets begin showing real readings.

No live device yet? You can still get useful data immediately. The Energy Forecast node pulls a free solar production forecast for your location (no API key needed), and the Energy Cost node computes spend from a rate and usage. These work out of the box.

6. Setting up notifications

So your alerts actually reach someone, configure a notification channel. Still in Setup, find the Notifications section. SETI AI can deliver alerts over three channels:

  • Discord — webhook, bot, and even voice announcements, plus an invite helper.
  • Slack — webhook delivery to your chosen channel.
  • Email (SMTP) — to any address, using your mail server.

To get going:

  1. Pick a channel — Discord is the quickest. Paste in your Discord webhook URL.
  2. (Optional) Set alert thresholds — for example, the battery SoC or voltage level that should trigger a warning. This lets SETI AI alert you automatically, separate from any workflow you build.
  3. Send a test to confirm it arrives.
  4. Review the notification history to see everything that's been sent.

Now your Low Battery Alert workflow from Step 4 has somewhere to deliver. For the full picture — severity levels, rate limiting, and how the agents send notifications on your behalf — see Notifications.

7. Where to go next

You're up and running. From here:

Welcome aboard.