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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) asked

Venus OS v2.80~17 available or testing

Good afternoon (or morning, night, evening... ) all,

A new version out for testing, v2.80~17.

In case you don't know what all this is about: this message is part of the Venus OS Beta test program. Read that link for more information.

Already, v2.80 is has some quite noticeable new features. For example the completely new AC Load monitoring, the improvement in the Total of all phases mode for ESS, the new DC metering function and still more. This new version mainly adds a few more minor improvements.


What to test?

The new features I mentioned just now. As well as, just like announced previously, basically everything: there are several major changes in v2.80, which can each make things break in unexpected places. The first change is that the used Python version has been updated from 2.7 to 3. Also the Open Embedded release was upgraded from Zeus to Dunfell, and lastly we changed to a read-only rootfs. All combined this means that (a) lots of tools and packages used will have changed to a newer version, and (b) lots of Victron code has been changed to be compatible with Python 3.


How to post an issue?

Preferably all issues are organised as answers to this question. One answer per issue. So first check the existing threads. If you have the same as someone else already reported, welcome to add a comment saying "me too". And preferably some more details. And in case its not listed yet, add a new Answer. Note that Answers and Comments are two different things here on community.

Lastly, if possible please revert to v2.73, to double check if the issue you're seeing was present there as well. Regressions require a different treatment than other issues and bugs, and one of the first things that needs doing in triaging a report is distinguishing between the two.


The plan with v2.80

Development and testing will continue for quite a while; I expect at least until late September; possible also into October this year. The main new feature that needs further completion is DC metering for both loads and production (alternator or hydro or wind for example).


Best regards,

Matthijs Vader

Changes since previous test version, which was v2.80~16:

  • Added time zone for Christmas Island.
  • Improve WiFi recovery from Failure status: still, after several improvements done in the past about this already, there were some situations where the WiFi status in the menu showed Failure - and basically the GX device had given up on re-connecting. This change prevents that. Do note that, especially for unattended systems, we always recommend to use the VRM auto-reboot feature.
  • Improve ET340 in combination with Zigbee link, when installed in a lossy/noisy environment.
  • Modbus-TCP: Fix definition of register 2710 (DVCC override charge voltage). Since the mistake rendered it largely useless, and this is a fairly new register, no new register is allocated.
  • Fix Inverter RS compatibility issue when used with DVCC (causing continuous appearing and disappearing data on the overview page)
  • Show "Recharge" in the overview if the system is charging because a CAN-BUS BMS battery requested the system to do so. Note that this requested charge is new, see previous post.
  • Force DVCC on, SVS off and STS off for BMZ batteries


Complete v2.80 change log, compared to v2.73:

I'll compile this later.



Venus OS
1 comment
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·

I forgot a major one!

Look:

1631627235875.png


1631627244757.png


Its primary application is to reduce the amount of work for OEMs doing series production of hybrid generators, boats, cars, trucks and so forth.

And ofcourse a secondary use case could be to have a backup in case the GX device fails, and/or reduce the amount of work involved when upgrading from, say a CCGX to a Cerbo.

The new feature can be found at the bottom of the Settings menu.

Good to know is that while many settings can be imported and exported with this, there is also a list of settings that can't be - mostly because those settings are tied to a serial number of, for example, an Energy meter.

The restore option is restricted to access level installer. The backup option is not.

What doesn't work is:

  • PV inverters:
  • Energy meter settings (role and phase configuration, DeviceInstance number)
  • Ethernet EM24 meter and Smappee meter DeviceInstance, role and CustomName).
  • PV-inverter settings (position and phase configuration, DeviceInstance number). What does work for PV Inverters is copying over IP addresses and whether to scan for PV-inverters.
  • Ethernet configuration is not preserved
  • Wi-Fi configuration is not preserved
  • Allocated DeviceInstance numbers for VE.Can solar chargers
  • CustomNames for most devices (those are almost always bound to the serial number of the device if not stored on the device itself even.).
  • Marine MFD app integration: works as long as the Device Instances haven't changed.


EDIT: Lastly, be ware that the feature isnā€™t fully completed yet: there is an issue for offline (no internet) systems that donā€™t already have an sdcard or usb stick for datalogging inserted: as soon as you plugin the sdcard or usb in such system, the (max two days) of storage in the device will be transferred to that stick.

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6 Answers
matthias-roetzer avatar image
matthias-roetzer answered Ā·

@mvader (Victron Energy) Hi Matthijs, glad to see that you are constantly improving your products! While having a look on your latest RC firmware, I've seen that you have been working on "AC loads" assignment option. Well, I've been thinking, If you are having that on agenda, wouldntĀ“t it be a nice idea to make the phase assignment of ET112 possible as well like it is eg for PV inverter data feed in? I think it would be more straight if the register assignment could be changed inside ET112 via Carlo Gavazzi software but as far as I know it is not possible. So doing such a maping on the GX device is definately not straight forward but it would be a nice to have feature instead of forcing ET112 to L1. Best regards, Matthias

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi Matthias, noted! that is a good idea. We'll look at that. Matthijs
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matthias-roetzer avatar image matthias-roetzer mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·

@mvader (Victron Energy) Hi Matthijs, is there already any roadmap regarding this feature? Please let me know. Thanks, Matthias

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ matthias-roetzer commented Ā·
Hi, no sorry. Its not forgotten though.
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matthias-roetzer avatar image matthias-roetzer mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
HI @mvader (Victron Energy), please don't mind my asking here and then every few months. Please keep it on the agenda. Would be a really nice feature to have. :)
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jeroend avatar image
jeroend answered Ā·

Downloaded the version and the large flavour (as I use NodeRed). After making my normal modification I do have two issues that I did not have on 2.72;
- The digital inputs are missing (all of them)

- The relays are missing (all of them)

Maybe an issue on my side: The backup option does not seem to find the USB stick (used to add the 'large' version)

I did notice the PageSettingsRelay.qml is slightly different so will focus on that first in trying to find the relays back.

Testing on a RaspberryPi 4

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi, fwiw: digital inputs and relays work fine on a Cerbo with v2.80~17. So probably the modification you're doing needs work. For more on that, please make a new question.


I want to try and keep the Venus OS beta threads to not be cluttered with Pi-specific things.

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jeroend avatar image jeroend mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Understood. It is the addition of 'large' that seems to break it. I'll try to find out more and enter a new question.
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dirkmuc avatar image
dirkmuc answered Ā·

Hi @mvader (Victron Energy) ,

one little issue. When I try to change the CAN Bus settings Venus OS crashes. The change is made, after a reboot the settings a correct, but still a bit surprising.

This behaviour was also present in the version before. I use the large image on a RPi4 if this is an information you need.

Thanks for your great work!


Cheers

Dirk

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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem commented Ā·
I've experienced this on occasion also. It isn't repeatable. Most of the time the change just works, but every once in a while the system crashes.
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ Kevin Windrem commented Ā·
Hi both. Thanks for the feedback.


I'd be very interested to hear if that happens on pi-s only, or someone also sees it on other GX devices.

And if it happens, what the log says. And what does crash mean exactly? That it auto-reboots?

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dirkmuc avatar image dirkmuc mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Good morning @mvader (Victron Energy) ,

the RPi is totally frozen (GUI and console), no auto reboot. Where can I find the logs? If needed feel free to log into my Pi.

Cheers

Dirk

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ dirkmuc commented Ā·

Hi, ok then probably Venus OS itself keeps running, but the gui gets stuck.

Changing the can-bus profile causes the gui to call a script to change the baudrate. This is the code:


void CanBusProfiles::changeCanBusBitRate(int bitrate)
{
    QProcess proc;

    qDebug() << "[CanBus] Bitrate change for" << mInterface << ":" << QString::number(bitrate);

    QStringList args = QStringList() << mInterface << QString::number(bitrate);
    proc.start("can-set-rate", args);
    proc.waitForFinished();
}


So my first thought is that the gui might get stuck for you when calling that script.

Here is the code for the can-set-rate script: https://github.com/victronenergy/meta-victronenergy/tree/master/meta-venus/recipes-connectivity/can-utils....

Logs: /data/logs/messages*

and /data/logs/gui/*, and in the commandline manual for Venus OS I've detailed how to easily look at those.

When gui is stuck, and logged in via commandline, run svc -t /service/gui to restart it; of which the doing will help confirm that indeed its the gui that is stuck.

All the best, Matthijs

Ps. what I'm hoping is that some savvy linux users from the community here help out on this wrt rpi. There are far more test systems out there with a GX then with a Pi, and no complaints from a GX: hence Pi.


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n-dee avatar image
n-dee answered Ā·

Hi,

switched to beta and back to 2.73 because ESS works really bad in beta.
With new firmware we are buying 0,4kwh per hour from grid (setpoint -50)
with old one its not perfect but most of the time zero as you can see in the pic

(Whole house behind Multiplus (setup: 2x3 with BYD LVL) - no smartmeter used)

1631856557726.png


1631856557726.png (84.1 KiB)
2 comments
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi, which ESS modes do you have configured? Preferably post a screenshot of the ess menu. Thanks
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n-dee avatar image n-dee mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·

ESS:

1631860604795.png

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1631860604795.png (213.1 KiB)
matthias-roetzer avatar image
matthias-roetzer answered Ā·

@mvader (Victron Energy) Hi Matthijs, I think there is an issue with the web-dashboard. The recent RC 2.80~17 does not update the web dashboard in realtime properly. It often hangs and shows old and sometimes weird data. When I refresh the web application it shows current data for the fraction of a second and then reverts back to old data which is then shown for at least a few minutes without change. I wasn't patient enough to wait longer. When I boot the Octo GX with firmware 2.73 this issue disappears and comes imediately back when booting with 2.80~17. I think I have seen this issue as well with earlier 2.80~nn versions but didn't investigate it in detail at that time because of the announced v2.73 detour. Best regards, Matthias

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gnagflow avatar image gnagflow commented Ā·
similar problem commented at 2.80.16
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n-dee avatar image n-dee gnagflow commented Ā·

I've got the same issue today - but on 2.73 !
Maybe not only 2.80 related.

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dennis avatar image dennis commented Ā·
+1
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi @Matthias Roetzer , @N-DEE , @gnagflow and others: we found and fixed in a regression related to the VRM dashboard live updates no longer working. The problem was introduced in an earlier version of v2.80.


Having the VRM Dashboard open could increase CPU usage of the GX Device significantly, due to a bug. And on some devices this would overload it, at which point the live-feed feature disables itself, and so forth.


Fix is in v2.80~19. Lets see by then how well it works; we still have to compare actual CPU use between v2.73 and v2.80. For now we just fixed / optimised the vrm dashboard-induced CPU load as much as we could.

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matthias-roetzer avatar image matthias-roetzer mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi @mvader (Victron Energy) performs much better now in 2.80~21. Although I have the feeling that realtime view is still not at it's best like in earlier versions. Please keep an eye on that. Thank you. Matthias
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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ matthias-roetzer commented Ā·
hi @Matthias Roetzer , good. There are still more improvements coming, I expect in v2.80~ 22.
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romain-bourdy avatar image
romain-bourdy answered Ā·

Hello,

I may have found a regression, I'm controlling my Quattro via MQTT and is was working fine until this update, when you change the "mode" on the write topic ( W/XXXXXX/vebus/257/Mode ) the value isn't updated on the "status" path ( N/XXXXXX/vebus/257/Mode ). Works fine again after downgrading.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·
Hi Romain, thank you. It could be related to the issue as reported by other, which is that the VRM dashboard live updates no longer work. We have a fix for that finished and we'll launch that for field testing soon.



So: once I release a new version, please test with that and let me know. Thank you! Matthijs

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dennis avatar image dennis mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ commented Ā·

Thanks for your work Matthijs!

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ā™¦ā™¦ dennis commented Ā·
haha not my work perse, but I'll forward the credits!
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