A standby generator only earns its keep if it actually starts when you need it. The problem is that the moment you need it most, during an outage, is the worst possible time to discover the battery is dead, the fuel went stale, or the carburetor gummed up from sitting idle for months. The fix the whole industry agrees on is simple: run the generator regularly. The hard part is remembering to do it, and proving it actually ran. FourScoped now does both for you.
Generator control is live for EG4 systems. You can start and stop your generator remotely, schedule automatic exercise runs, line up one-time runs for the future, and see exactly how every run went, all from the same dashboard you already use to watch your solar and batteries.
Start and stop from anywhere
Open the Generator page and you get a live status panel: whether the generator is running, its output in watts, voltage, frequency, and energy produced today. It breaks output down per leg (L1 and L2) so you can confirm both phases are healthy. Starting a run is one button, with a confirmation step and a configurable warm-up, run length, and cool-down. Stopping is just as immediate. No more driving out to the equipment to flip a switch or push a physical button.
One honest note built right into the page: the live readings come from EG4 on a short delay, so they refresh every few minutes rather than instantly. We label the exact data timestamp so you always know how fresh the numbers are.
Automatic exercise scheduling
This is the feature that quietly protects your investment. Set a recurring weekly schedule, say every Saturday at 1:10 PM for five minutes, and FourScoped runs the generator for you and logs the result. You can create several schedules if you want different patterns, enable or disable each one independently, and the next run time is always shown so there is no guessing. Schedules run in your own timezone, so the time you pick is the time it fires.
Currently, GridBOSS-based systems have no configurable automatic exercise function in the EG4 app. FourScoped fixes that.
One-time runs for when you see it coming
Sometimes you want a run that is not part of a routine. A storm is forecast for tomorrow afternoon, and you want a fresh top-up beforehand, or you are heading out of town and want to confirm everything is healthy. Schedule a one-time run for any future date and time. It fires once, then disables itself. Because it starts your generator automatically and unattended, we put a clear warning on it: only schedule a run for a time when it is safe for the generator to start on its own.
Proof that the run actually worked
Here is a subtlety most monitoring misses. An exercise run is usually unloaded, so it can legitimately deliver almost zero kilowatt-hours even when the generator started perfectly. Judging success by energy alone would flag every healthy exercise run as a failure. FourScoped judges success the right way: by detecting generator voltage during the run. If the generator produced voltage, the run is marked successful, even at zero load. If no voltage ever appeared, you get a clear "No start detected" flag, which is exactly the early warning you want.
Every run, manual or scheduled, lands in a run history you can scroll through and export to CSV. Each entry shows when it ran, how long, whether it was manual or scheduled, and the result: a confirmed run with the energy delivered, an unloaded run confirmed by voltage, or a failed start. Over weeks of exercise runs, that history becomes a maintenance record you can hand to anyone.
Built for how EG4 systems are wired
Generator control works whether your generator is wired to a GridBoss (with two-wire start) or, on systems without a GridBoss, to the master inverter. FourScoped detects the right device automatically and sends commands accordingly, so you do not have to think about the plumbing.
You are always in control
Starting a generator is a real, physical action, and we treat it that way. Manual starts require confirmation, scheduled runs are clearly labeled, and a safety and liability disclaimer spells out that you are responsible for running the generator only when it is safe to do so. FourScoped sends the command; you decide when it is appropriate.
Generator control is available now as a Pro feature. If you have an EG4 system with a remote-start generator, set up a weekly exercise schedule today and let FourScoped keep your backup power ready, and prove it, every single week.