question

I've been doing a bit more investigation, and it looks like the module won't run with hardware SPI enabled. This is normally disabled on the Pi using raspi-config, which VenusOS doesn't have, or dtparam command line, again VenusOS doesn't have that command. I'm not sure what the SPI is used for in VenusOS, but I did come across someone who had a BMS running through it, so I'm guessing it's for external sensors. I'm only connecting USB for the VE.direct ports of the Victron kit, so I don't know if I did manage to disable SPI whether it would affect the running of VenusOS.

If anyone has any ideas on how to disable SPI in VenusOS, please let me know. I'm running it on a spare Raspberry Pi while I mess around with stuff, so I'll try anything. [EDIT: Now know how to disable SPI - see below]

Thanks

Steve

I'll add what I'm finding here, even though it may be no use.

I made a mistake saying dtparam doesn't work, it's in the /u-boot/config.txt file, and set to on. I've set this to off, rebooted the Pi, and sure enough SPI has now disappeared from the dev folder. It's made no difference though, it's still not working.

I have run a debug program for the Energenie board

https://github.com/Achronite/ener314rt-debug

Running this suggests it's not communicating with the board, so obviously it wasn't SPI conflicting with it, or if it was, there's something else as well. I'm not really sure why SPI needs disabling, because it looks like that's how the Energenie board communicates???

I'm starting to think it's actually the Venus software probing the port that's causing the Energenie module to fail. This may never be able to run along side VenusOS, which is a shame.

Steve

Final update.

I have not been able to get the ENER314-RT board working with VenusOS. I've tried installing various drivers, reconfiguring the GPIO settings, and messing around until I brick the OS and have to reinstall (quite a number of times.) I may be missing something but am a bit worried that even if I could get it working, it may be wiped out with a firmware update, or even disrupt the operation of the Venus software.

I found an old Pi B I had lying around and installed Raspian and Node-red on it. I can control sockets just fine on this Pi using the ENER314 plugin, and I can connect to this Pi from VenusOS using MQTT in Node Red. I have Mosquitto running as a broker for MQTT on a different server, but I expect it would run on the Pi B.

It's not ideal, but I'm more confident it will hold up after firmware updates.

I've had this running a couple of days now, just switching a socket on and off when there's excess solar, and it seems stable enough. As a bonus I've found a use for an old Pi B that had no use for anything else.

Steve