Background

I have installed Venus OS version 2.42 on a Raspberry pi 3b+ without any significant problem. I have the 7" touch screen working including dimming and screen blank timeout. All this following the instruction in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I39uEwnrXWc from Himmelberger Bus. So I know how to use nano and how to install overlays, edit the config.txt file, and generally know my way round Linux / Ubuntu etc.. I even have a £15 GPS USB device working and logging location to the VRM. I am hoping to connect to my Victron BMV 700, MPPT and Multi compact when I can, but they are on our boat in the marina right now so I won't be doing that till later in the season.

I have a PI HAT (custard Pi 3a) with an MCP3208 on and have installed the MCP3208 overlay and edited the config.txt file.

Question

I am stuck at this stage:

1. I downloaded the compiled image for the Venus GX, ripped out the /opt/victronenergy/dbus-adc directory from the image with 7-zip, copied the directory to the Raspberry Pi.

Exactly what is the "compiled image of Venus GX" I need ?

And the steps needed to extract the directory?

(Sorry that's two questions on one post )

What I have tried

I have tried everything with many of the images here (Raspberry, BeagleBone and ccgx ) https://updates.victronenergy.com/feeds/venus/release/images

I have opened them with 7-zip blown images to SD (using BalenaEtcher) and then looked on the SD using MAC, Windows and Linux I can't seem to find the bus-adc directory I need anywhere.

I have a MacBook pro with a windows partition to answers for either MAC or Windows will be fine.

Please help - thanks

PS

would it hurt for the dbus-adc directory to be included in future raspberry pi images, I presume they would publish nothing to the dbus u unless the rest of the interface and drivers were present?

I'm and active user electronic engineer and programmer so I will be happy to contribute in future what I have learnt and managed to do with the analogue inputs - my plan is to develop some custom circuity with FETs to interface the tank level voltages I have on the boat to the input range of the Custard Pi 3a HAT. Also considering onboard temperature and humidity for monitoring over winter.

Hi, I have a setup with 2 Axpert inverters of 4kW each connected in parallel to 12 PV panels, the grid, 2 Blue Nova batteries and the load. I want to install a Venus OS monitoring system on raspberry Pi. Blue Nova has confirmed that I can put the batteries in parallel and connect just one of them to collect information from both. Can I do the same with the Axperts, or should I connect both of them with the Venus system separately with their own RS485/USB cable? If so, how will Venus deal with the different inputs? Many thanks.

I'm aware that Bluetooth is currently not supported in the Venus OS for Raspberry Pi. Is anyone currently working on this that I can share code/help with? Am wanting to pick up the data from a BlueSmart 24|16|1 in the Pi as I can't see that the Blue Smart has any cabled options (ve.Direct etc)

Love to be able to have ESS able to prioritizes discharge from one battery over another at a high rate - Use it at maximum power drain possible until zero SOC as quickly as possible.

I have 2 Zcells and 2 Multi-plus Inverters solar PV and Grid. My primary goal is for solar and batteries as a UPS for my on grid business. That's why I have 2 Victron Inverters now.

Currently discharge happens often to both batteries. Zcells need a full discharge to 0% SOC every 3 days. While Zcell has a device Extractor which saves a little power to the battery not in maintenance It slows the discharge process. A slow discharge rate means a battery is in maintenance cycle for a lot longer than desirable for a U.P.S.. Usual setting in ESS restrict the rapid discharge of the single battery in maintenance cycle

I want also to avoid discharging any PV until battery(ies) not in maintenance are fully charged.

Goals-

1. Discharge single battery in maintenance cycle to 0% SOC as quickly as possible for self counsumption or to the Grid
2. Ensure other battery is not discharging and is 100% SOC while other battery is in maintenance
3. Ensure Solar PV charges battery to 100% before discharging PV to grid (noting goal 1 as a priority)

Zcell are working on BMS side for me 'UPS mode 'and other Zcell users. Note RFX staff and executive are very helpful and approachable.

Happy to pay for this. If you can and have a freelancer or similar or quote directly for scripting as suggested to " Changing solar priority in ESS" by "Potgieter"

by Guy Stewart in this thread

Thanks. Not comfortable scripting this myself

Hi all.

I've got Venus 2.42 running on a Pi3 B+, with a 3.5" GPIO LCD. After much faffing, I've got it displaying the output as per this image:

[image]

Unfortunately, that's as far as it gets. I've renamed the headless file, and that makes the last underscore stop flashing at boot, as if it crashes. With the headless file still there, it flashes and is responsive.

Everything else about it works fine - just no display. The remote console is working as it should.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Simon

Since the CANvu has been released, is there any chance we can run the Pi with the official 7 inch touch screen at higher resolution? There aren't any specs of the CANvu screen, but it at least looks 16x9. Thanks!

Hello, since updating Venus from 2.40 to 2,42 has destabilized my system. I have a Multiplus 3000/24/50 and a Smartsolar 150/70 MPPT. There seems to be some communication issue between the Venus and mppt which shuts down constantly and causes battery management issues

HI all

Has anyone managed to write a script that will run all the modifications and changes back to the RPI after a version update? like headless, touchscreen, screen dimming and timer. So we don't have to redo this every time.

I've read https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ccgx:root_access but cnat quite get my head around what is needed? I'm no programmer but I dont mind a little tinkering if I have some guidance.

Thanks

Mark

Hi,

I am looking for a possibility, to grab data from some Victrons (BMV, MPPT) via BLE for further usage in homeautomation.

Victron said, they will not publish BLE documentation

@mvader (Victron Energy Staff) answered me, i should post this Topic here...

I started looking at the BLE Interfaces of BMV712 and 3 different MPPTs

Till now i found, that the Service UUIDs and the Properties (of the 4 devices) are _absolute_ identical !

I started sniffing the BT Communication between ‚Victron Connect‘ and the devices...

The Logs are actually available in TexasInstruments SmartRF sniffer format (.psd)

I would apreciate finding somebody, to share Knowledge.

I am sure, there are some people outside, also interested in this topic.

And perhaps we can coordinate it here in this Thread ?

Regards stefan

Hi,

How can I connect a resistive tank sensor to venus OS on a Pi?

I own a camper and wanted to add proper battery monitoring. Your solution stands out bc of your support of the open source community. Thats why I bought a BMV-702 in a hear beat. Plus VE.Direct to USB to be able to get it connected with a Pi3B+ running Venus OS.

I want to get rid of the existing panel which only adds information about tank fill (fresh/grey water).

How can I add the tank information to venus os running on the Pi? Do I need some Can bus hardware?

Thanks in advance.

Ralf

Hi,

Some questions here pertain to using our packages on a RaspberryPi Zero W running Rasbian OS Lite. This question is about something else: testing if the RaspberryPi Venus OS image runs on those Pi Zeros.

Our wiki states:

• Raspberry Pi Zero: we don't know if this is supported (its a community project: please try and let us know!)
• Raspberry Pi Zero W & WH: same thing: we don't know.

Is there any one out here that could look into that? Could be as simple as testing; and all works; and then we know and change the wiki.

Or not; and then more work is needed; for which we’ll need some outside / community help.

Hello, I'm a developer looking to write a custom frontend to talk for my 150V/100A MPPT Solar charge controller, hopefully via bluetooth. I'm wondering if either any (Java?) APIs are available already to talk to the controller, or if there are specifications/serial protocols available for how to talk to the controller via bluetooth.

I'm looking to develop a Java-based REST service that will give current and historical metrics to a web UI via JSON. If there's a product/bridge that already offers something similar, that would be sufficient.

I’m new to the pi and Victron in general but I spent this evening getting my pi touch screen setup for touch, dimming and screen off settings. I got everthing calibrated and working, then on a whim I decided to see if there was a new beta build available and 2.30~40 was available. I installed it and it killed most of my settings (touch, dimming, screen off) and is no longer headless. However it kept some of my settings for dvcc, network and WiFi.

Is this normal behavior when upgrading the pi? Or maybe just with beta releases?

Thanks.

Hello all,

Using the technical details provided by Victron Energy in one of their PDFs, I was able to create a small Java library to discover VE.Direct USB devices and read data from them. I needed this for my MPPT Charge controller but it should be usable with more or less any VE.Direct device.

https://github.com/kazetsukaimiko/victron-java

This library uses Java 9+ Streams. It has a single dependency of JSSC, although there is an abstraction layer built in so that can be removed if necessary. It can also be used to read events from the command line, and has nice helper code to convert electrical units.

I wanted to put this out there and get an idea of how useful it might be to others. It is well tested with 80%-90% code coverage. I organized it to support more protocols than VE.Direct, but as I currently don't have any Victron devices that use other protocols I have omitted writing in support for them, but feel free to submit feature requests via the GitHub Issue tracker.

I intend to maintain this library and eventually get it into Maven central for easy import into Maven/Gradle projects. To test it you will need git, maven, and Java 11+. You can then checkout the code:

git clone https://github.com/kazetsukaimiko/victron-java.git && cd victron-java

And run the CLI Monitor:

mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="kaze.app.ShowDevices"

I was able to connect to my MPPT charge controller via BLE and I could see some services outputting seemingly random values which may point to encryption. I would like to read temperature and solar power yield.

Hi,

If someone want to have extended data printed on Grid Tile as in the example below here are the modified files.

[image]

Please keep in mind that customizations do not survive to VenusOS upgrade and some script must be crated to restore all the modifications after upgrade

Regards,

Mihai

Hi Everyone,

Just setup my Pi with a Multiplus 2

Trying to add the device to the online portal- asking for VRM Portal ID.

Where would that be ? I have tried the WiFI MAC and it does not work .

Phoenix Smart IP43 Charger first tests I see two problems:

1. No possibility of connection with Smart Battery Sense

2. Too high power consumption during start-up

Hey all,

I don't know if I'm just doing something really silly, but I can not get my SmartSolar MPPT 100/20 to communicate with Venus OS that I have installed on a Raspberry Pi. When I access the menu on Venus OS all i see is Notifications and Settings as options. I have the MPPT device connected to the Raspberry Pi using a Victron VE.Direct to USB cable. Do I need to enable a setting in the MPPT device, or in Venus to get this working? It feels like I've missed a step somewhere.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Struggeling to set this up I have:

Ubuntu VM with a bridged adaptor on the same network as the CCGX.

I can ping the CCGX

Installed Node Red (https://nodered.org/docs/getting-started/raspberrypi ) got it running as a service and can view the flow editor.

Installed node-red-contrib-victron by doing steps 1,2 & 3 (https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron#installation-and-usage)
Now I can see the Victron Energy tab

[image]

A CCGX with Modbus/TCP and MQTT turned.

Root password set and SSH'd into.

Carried out Step 4. (https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron#installation-and-usage) - rebooted

Back on the Ubuntu VM

export NODE_RED_DBUS_ADDRESS=192.168.1.4:78 (the IP of the CCGX)

restarted node-red

But can't seem to see anything in the node-red editor.

[image]

What am i doing wrong? Do I need to generate the node specification file? (https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron#generating-the-node-specification-file-developers)

Where do i get 2 .csv files from, I've tried just running (after installing csv-parse and gar via npm)

node parse-services.js --append

but it throws an error:

Please make sure that the files ./csv/dataAttributeEnums.csv and ./csv/dataAttributes.csv exist.

Hi,

I am doing some QT modification to my RPI installation in order to add more useful information on the front tiles and I am looking for a way to apply modifications without restarting the OS.

There is a way to reload the QT files without restarting the OS?

Thanks,

Mihai

Hi All,

I recently setup a Raspberry Pi 4 using the image from (https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/25666/venus-on-raspberry-pi-4.html?childToView=38071#answer-38071 )

All is working well, and it is reporting to VRM no issues, so I know it has internet, however when checking for updates I receive the below message.

Any Ideas? Thanks.

[image]

Hi,

I' got an Innovenergy Salidomo Battery running which is VRM Victron controlled. In addition, I'm using a Raspberry Pi to control different devices depending on temperature and motion activity. All is running on Openhabian 2.5+. To get access to the VRM data such as SoC of the Battery, AC usage etc, I activated in the VRM remote console the MQTT option. With my MQTT Broker on the Raspberry Pi I get quite a lot of channels coming from the Victron BMS with real-time data of almost everything I was looking for. However, I'm struggling to find the PV Power channel (Solar power coming in from my solar plant), which was apparently available under the stateTopic = "N/a0f6fd5aa8c8/system/0/Dc/Pv/Power" on previous VRM firmware's. My Victron is running on firmware v2.42.

Has the channel name changed or is it not available anymore?

Many thanks

Hello all

please excuse how much of a novice I am only recently started using lithium battery s.

Currently I have a welfare container that runs off of 2 12v/300ah connected as 24v. To this I have a 24v/3000 multiplus inverter plus, 24v tea urn led lights and a webasto diesel heater. I have come in today to find that the batteries were only showing 12v on my bmv.

Tried connecting to mains power but the BMS will not allow my inverter to power on as not to damage the battery. So I have disconnected the batteries as to charge them the one battery is showing 13v the others is showing 0.5v any ideas how only one of the batteries could have dropped this low. Also what is my best option to try and revive this battery if possible.

Also nothing was powered on when cabin was left so unsure what drained the battery

@mvader (Victron Energy Staff)

1. Most wanted by me: Absorption termination based on Tail Current for Multiplus / Quattros
2. Possibility to set Absorption Time in minutes for Multiplus / Quattros
3. Possibility to disable Repeated Absorption and / or extend the number of days from 45 to 365
4. A Victron Smart BMS for DIY battery packs made of third party LiFePo4 cells: cell level voltage monitoring and protection, temperature protection, optional passive top balance, self-shutdown to ultra-low-power deep sleep in case of cell under-voltage, maybe an option to have non-self-resettable protection.

Thank you!

Hello

Any one know how to rotate the 7 inch touch screen?

Tks

I'd like to reopen discussion on this topic. I'm a novice and freely admit that I really don't understand all aspects of how to get this to work. So I may be totally off with this so please correct me if I'm wrong. I've read this thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/victron-dev-venus/mejgJbMjU34/yogWAU5wCAAJ;context-place=forum/victron-dev-venus

I purchased the same board as what's here, the Expander Pi with the mcp3208 12-bit ADC.

From reading this, I'm a bit confused how to wire this up. In that thread, they point to the reference voltage of 1.8v. However the expander pi has a reference voltage of 4.096. But in other threads, they talk about a reference voltage of 5v. I also see the schematic of the BBB Cape and it says 5v as well:

[image]

I'm not sure what is correct or if the reference voltage even matters since both are 12-bit ADCs, the reference voltage shouldn't matter as it's just reading the resistance of the sender. But then I'm confused on how to wire this up with the Expander Pi. Anyone who has this board, would they care to share their setup, possibly with photos or diagrams? I'd appreciate it.

tagging @WKirby as you've always been super helpful!

Hi
I have a Rasperry Pi (3b) with Venus (latest version).

It is only (for now) connected to a Quattro via MK3-USB interface. The quattro is updated.

It is turn on, and is charging. Have also conncted some loads to the Quattro, and they are working.

When I log into vrm.victronenergy.com the info is only showing: No data to display

When I log in directly via the IP-adress, it says: System off

What have I done wrong?

Thanks!

Dear Reader,

I have a Raspberry PI 3 with A BMV712 currently connected via USB to VDE Lead
I also have a MPPT 100/30 Non-Bluetooth that I am going to connect with a second USB to VDE Lead

Thirdly I have a Smart Battery Sense Bluetooth and wish to integrate this so the MPPT Controller can work with the Battery when temperature is low.

Is there any way to make this happen ? OR could I potentially split the VDE port of the solar controller into TWO and connect a Bluetooth Adaptor to one and the USB to VDE to the Other ?

Thanks in Advance

Robert