I have a Victron installation on my boat, being monitored with a rPi running Venus. I have a boat server running Ubuntu, connecting to the boat NMEA network and running a SignalK server and Node Red. While the NMEA data is working ok, I'm having problem with the Victron data in Node Red. Logs show SK connecting to the Venus ok, whether using MQTT or remote DBUS. The SignalK server is displaying the Victron data ok in the data browser, again, with either connection to Venus.
But I am getting the same error in Node Red as was discussed in this unresolved question over a year ago:
I think the problem is the palette installation. On the remote node-red-contrib-victron instructions, it says:
In order to use the plugin remotely, Node-RED and the plugin needs to be locally installed:
- install node-red on your system
- cd to the node-red user directory, typically
~/.node-red - install node-red-contrib-victron locally,
npm install @victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron
How can I install Node Red or the contrib-victron locally? There is no npm on the Venus.
Further, it would seem the easiest solution could be to replace the Venus firmware with the latest 2.70 large that includes NodeRed. However, in order to prevent a repeat of the moisture in the RPi circuit board issue I have had before, I have sprayed the RPi board with lacquer coating, and the SD card is now glued into the socket and can not be removed.
I can ssh into the Venus with root access, so what if I can install npm into that os and then install Node Red? Will that help? How is that done?
