question

thomas-g avatar image
thomas-g asked

Relays and Battery Data on Venus GX Disappeared

My Venus GX has been installed for 4 months and working perfectly - using both relays to switch generator and a pump. Until today...

First Issue: Now, for no reason, the relay setting has disappeared from the settings menu. And I have no access to see or control the 2 relays. Why would the settings for relays disappear from menu? Normally, even with nothing connected to the relay inputs, they showed up as a menu item.

Second issue: The main screen no longer shows data for battery levels, PV levels, DC current etc (but they do still show up correctly and update correctly in the device list page so it is receiving all battery and MPPT data as per normal). This happened at same moment that relays disappeared.


And Last issue: the VRM Portal is not updating data. The Venus GX is online, and connecting every 30 mins - so I can see it - but the last data is from 5 hours ago (when relays were lost)

So what has happened ? Is it software or hardware of the Venus GX device?

Basically only half of the system is now working and they are not related (ie. relays going missing are not related to the main screen missing the battery voltage)... So it seems like a a software failure?


Using latest firmware on all connected devices. Tried rebooting, unplugging power etc multiple times.

Any advice appreciated

Venus OS
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3 Answers
Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image
Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) answered ·

Hi @Thomas G

What firmware version are you running on your GX device?

4 comments
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thomas-g avatar image thomas-g commented ·

Venus GX firmware v 2.54 (and connected devices 100/50 and 100/20 MPPTs on v1.50 and BMV-712on v4.03)

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Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ thomas-g commented ·

Hi @Thomas G

I'm sorry, you didn't @mention me so I didn't get notified of your answer.


Did you read mvader's reply?

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thomas-g avatar image thomas-g commented ·

So it seems after 7 days no one has an answer - or has experienced this fault, which is odd.

And after replying to Daniel Boekel immediately with and answer to his 'what firmware version" (even though I clearly stated in my question that is was running the latest) - no response from him either.

Whats disappointing is that I first contacted Victron direct for support (for a product that is 4 months old) and they refused to provide support saying I need to talk to the dealer. My dealer is an online seller, and the online platform won't tell me who the seller is (online platform is called is DesertCart). The seller information just says 'Victron' and 'USA'.

I can't believe a company would refuse to even begin to engage in support for their own product. Its all well and good to say 'call to your dealer' - but for us that are living/working from remote areas around the world (which is one of the main reason Victron products are made - for people like us) we don't have this local dealer available.

Moral of the story? Don't expect support from Victron if you get into any sort of issues with your new products. Maybe better just to buy 3 or 4 of the cheap Chinese knock offs and swap them out as they fail - because one 'good' Victron product is pretty useless with no support.

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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ thomas-g commented ·

@Thomas G

I am sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the Victron Community.

Victron does offer support through the proper channels. Usually it is the supplier first that the dealership who supplied the seller. All legit sellers have dealership support even online seller. After that it moves up the channels to Victron Support.

This is a community mainly run by individuals and installers. We are the guys on the ground who do the work and troubleshoot our sites, and try to offer help here.

These steps are outlined here https://www.victronenergy.com/support

https://www.victronenergy.com/contact for more direct contact.

And for a direct request for support this is not the place so try...

https://professional.victronenergy.com/support/?is_next=www.victronenergy.nl

To be honest I have never gone that far as we have a great dealership here with plenty of support. They have replaced product that I have had issues with no extra charge to me or my customers.

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thomas-g avatar image
thomas-g answered ·

So it seems after 7 days no one has an answer - or has experienced this fault - which is odd.


And after replying to Daniel Boekler immediately with an answer to his “what firmware version” (even though I clearly stated in my original question that it is running the latest) - no response from him either.


Whats disappointing is that I first contacted Victron direct for support (for this product which is only 4 months old) and they refused to provide any support saying I need to talk to my dealer. My ‘dealer’ is an online seller and the online platform refuses to tell me the name of the seller (online platform is called DesertCart). The seller information just says ‘Victron’ and ‘USA’.


I cant believe a company would refuse to even begin to engage in support for their own product.


Its all well and good to say ‘call you dealer’ - but for us that are living/working from remote areas around the world (which is one of the main reason Victron products are made - for people like us out in the wild, not connected to normal houses and streets) we don’t have this local dealer concept available.


Moral of the story? Don’t expect support from Victron if you get into any sort of issues with your new product. I’ve tried three avenues to get support (Victron, dealer and this community) and got nothing. Maybe its better to buy 3 or 4 of the cheap Chinese knock offs and swap them out as they fail because one ‘good’ Victron product is pretty useless with no support.


(I’m also reposting this a second time because the first one (with this exact same wording) was sent to be ‘moderated’ and then never got published. Is that Victron censoring bad or unfavourable comments?)

5 comments
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Hi @Thomas G,

Did you try the instructions under Step 3 here? https://www.victronenergy.com/support

If you don't know who your dealer is, there is a function to find them and get in touch with them here. Definitely a good idea to try and get in touch with them now, if this does turn into a warranty case - then it will be through them.

Regarding the firmware version request - it's important to be specific with the numbers, the latest is changes over time, so it's good to be precise when going through troubleshooting.


While going through that, the next step I would try is reverting to the previous GX device firmware and seeing if that makes any difference;

Settings Menu -> Firmware -> Stored backup Firmware -> Press to boot on the previous version.

We don't moderate or hide comments for criticism, your original post was sent to the auto moderator. Apologies for the delay, a frustration on top of a frustration for you, but no malice intended. Please stick with it, and we will get to a resolution.

I agree with part of your Moral, finding a good dealer who knows the equipment, your application, and provides good customer service is extremely important. This goes beyond Victron, and applies to all power electronics because they are all part of a bigger and more complex system. Victron doesn't provide direct end-customer support, only through our dealer network, so it is important that you know and trust your dealer.

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thomas-g avatar image thomas-g Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented ·

Thanks for your comment. I did follow instructions under Step 3 (and that was before I resorted to asking for help her). All I got back was a reply from Victron saying "Please contact t the loc al supplier for first line support". Even when I added my serial number it did not show who the appropriate dealer is or what steps I should take after that didn't work.

So this leaves me completely stuck - with Victron not willing to answer a support question in any shape or form.

From my email to Victron support I got a 'service request' number - but all that did was generate an auto follow up email 7 days later saying "how would you rank our service" !

I understand this is a community forum - I'm just posting here as a note of warnign to other customers and the hope that someone else had experienced my issue and had suggestions. And because I was unable to get support elsewhere in the first instance.

Lastly, I gave Daniel Boeker (Victron) here on this forum the number of my firmware (on all devices) within an hour of him asking - but never got a reply from him again.

I will now try the firmware downgrade suggestion as you suggested.

But I think my experience should be shared with all customers as a warning of what support they will or (in my case) won't get from Victron.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ thomas-g commented ·

Thanks for the feedback, sounds like you have done everything by the book. So my apologies that you've been left hanging. That form SHOULD have put you in touch with an email to your dealer.

It seems you've found a crack in the system that I would like to fix.

I understand your frustration, hopefully we can turn the experience around, and improve it for all others in the future too.

I will see if I can find out why the email to dealer didn't happen in this case.


I hope the firmware downgrade gives some progress.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ thomas-g commented ·

Hi @Thomas G, we tried to reach you by phone and email since last week - but no replies.

Also, we're not sure what international dialling code to use for the phone number - is it an USA number, or UK? Or Greece?

If you still need help, please get back to us; thank you!

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thomas-g avatar image thomas-g mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

I got an email from Simon Y a few days ago saying he was going to get in touch with support - but he did not get in touch (a bit odd to email saying you'll help soon - but then not follow up with the actual help).

In this last hour he made email contact again. So we'll see if that leads to something...

I don't use telephone (nor have access to it). Not sure why your first line of tech support is only to try and make a phone call to someone... online chat/email/messaging is pretty standard nowadays (especially for remote users).

But so far - no suggestions from Victron other than to downgrade firmware - (which did not have any effect on the problem).

So certainly not very tech productive for the 2 weeks since I first started asking for support

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rock2ya avatar image
rock2ya answered ·

Hello, i know your problem is two years old, but i got the same Problem today with Version 2.8

how did you fix it?

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Related Resources

Victron Venus OS Open Source intro page

Venus OS GitHub (please do not post to this)

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