Not sure I'm going about this right. In my trailer I have a MPPT 100/15 solar controller installed. I bought a Venus GX and will be buying a Multiplus 12/300/120. I purchased a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to use instead of a CCGX as a display. What do I need to do to set this all up to seamlessly observe and control my system? I thought I had it figured out until I went to set up Venus OS on the Pi.

Hi everybody,

I am currently setting up my RV with some Victron equipment (BMV, smart MPPT, etc) as a central element I use a pi with Venus OS.

My question is, it is possible to have Grafana/InfluxDB on the same device? I do not what to run a second pi just for that as energy consumption is always critical.

I am not a Linux guru and struggling installing the docker-composer on my Venus OS pi.

Thanks you and help and/or tips.

Cheers

Dirk

Keen to have the radiation sensor Si-RS485TC Series -integrated with the Venus . Do you have a plannned release date for this update?

Yacht Electrical Problems

We have multiple charging sources:

1. Shore Power: Victron Multiplus 3kVA, 240-12V, 120Amp
2. Solar Panels: Victron MPPT 150/45, 480W panels
3. Genset: Direct DC, 200Amp Alternator, Balmar 614 Smart Regulator
4. Engine: Direct DC, 80 Amp Alternator, Balmar 614 Smart Regulator

We have a Victron BMV712 Smart and a Smartguage to monitor the AGM batteries (765 AmpHr).

These have individual charging systems and we find it difficult to balance the system. Consequentially in the morning when the sun activates the solar panels the MPPT charger thinks it’s in Bulk/Absorb but the Shore Power thinks it’s on float. Some cycling occurs as the MPPT tries to take over.

We have been thinking about the priorities:

1. When Shore Power is on the MPPT is not required
2. When the Genset is on the MPPT is not required
3. When the Engine is on the MPPT is not required

What can we do to balance the system?

UPDATE 2019-10-11: Earlier I wrote that one can now set input current limit *and* control on/off/charger only with a VE.Bus BMS, but thats wrong: input current limit works. Changing between on/off/charger only is still not possible for installations having a VE.Bus BMS. Apologies!

Hello all!

Its been a while, but we've not disappeared ;o). This is the first time to make v2.40 available for testing. It brings lots of changes and features, a few large and many small ones. There are several gems in there. For example that now shore current limit can be set for systems with a VE.Bus BMS (yeah!). Also it simplifies installing a system with a BYD battery by setting the DVCC and SVS config options automatically as well as forcing them in the known good position. And F I N A L L Y: it transmits data out on the NMEA2000 network. For now, it transmits battery monitor data. Inverter/charger data will follow asap. And then many many more changes. Better first get a cup of tea of coffee and then sit and read.

I must say that for many of below I had a hard time writing them down in a concise manner, if you see any improvements on the text, welcome to post below. It will all end up into the official changelog & blog post.

Lastly, if you don't know what this post is about: this is about our GX Product range, and this post is aimed at all the members of the Beta test group. See this information on how to join (and leave) that group is here.

Enjoy the testing. If you see any issues, please post below. Thank you.

Matthijs

Change log

Inverter/charger monitoring & control

• Better support systems with a VE.Bus BMS. It used to be impossible to control the input current limit on a GX Device. Now, as long as the Multi or Quattro is running 415 or newer firmware, this control is available. Switching between On/Off and Charger-only is not possible.
• Add Grid failure aka Shore disconnect detection. When enabled, an alarm is raised when the system hasn't been connected to the AC input defined as Grid or Shore for more than 5 seconds. The alarm shows as a Notification in the GUI, as an alarm on the VRM Portal and is available on ModbusTCP / MQTT. Very nice for backup systems. But also for yachts or vehicles on shore power. Now its no longer necessary create a complicated custom alarm rule on VRM, monitoring Inverter/charge states. Note that this settings monitors that the system is connected to grid/shore. Generator monitoring is already available as part of the Generator start/stop function. This feature does not work for systems using the Ignore AC Input settings in out inverter/chargers: when the system ignores the AC input, ie runs in island mode even though grid is available, it will report a grid failure.
• Send the charger state (Bulk, Absorption, Float, Storage, Equalise) of inverter/charger to the VRM Portal, when in Offgrid mode and charging with power from a PV Inverter wired on the AC output side. Note that this parameter is not yet used on the VRM Portal website, but you can see it already in the CSV/XLSX download. This is useful especially for systems in Off-grid mode with PV Inverters on the output.
• Add VE.Bus network error counters. Useful to help troubleshooting vague VE.Bus Errors cq to rule out cable issues. Counter data is also available on VRM. Needs a document on explaining how to interpret those values.

DVCC & Scheduled charging:

• Scheduled charging: change the hysteresis on SOC when battery full from 0.1% to 5%.
• Complete support for the recently introduced VE.Can MPPTs. All DVCC control features were added: current and voltage limit control, as well as SVS, STS, and Shared Current Sense (SCS). With this change they are now fully functional also for ESS systems and systems with Managed Batteries.
• Add an option to send the battery current as measured by a BMV to the Solar Chargers. This goes hand in hand with a new feature in the Solar Chargers, to end the Absorption phase based on tail current, and then actual to tail current based end of absorption (primarily for lead batteries). This is part of DVCC, and only applies to systems that are not ESS (since then the inverter/charger manages the charge profile), and have a battery monitor such as a BMV-700 or Lynx Shunt VE.Can. Requires a Solar charger firmware version not yet officially released. Download the latest VictronConnect v5.12 beta to use & test this new feature.
• Add an option to use Battery Temperature as measured by a BMV, the GX Device itself, as well as a MultiPlus for other connected chargers: Shared Temperature Sense.
• ESS: use the Multi as source for Solar Charger voltage sense - always.

Managed Batteries (BYD, Pylontech, Freedomwon, and similar)

• Add capacity. Visible on VRM on the diagnostics page, and in the GUI of the GX Device
• Fix Freedomwon Lite recognition. They were being recognised as a LG battery, now as a Freedomwon Lite
• For BYD batteries, MG Energy Systems batteries as well as Victron batteries connected with a Lynx Ion BMS, eliminate the need to the installer to configure DVCC and SVS: they are now automatically set (and unable to change) to the required settings: DVCC=ON and SVS=OFF for both batteries. This will be a nice improvement in making it easier to install those batteries. We'll do the same for more battery brands later.

Other changes

• Add NMEA2000 out function: transmit battery monitor out on the VE.Can/NMEA2000 network so it can be picked up by Marine MFDs. Currently it only transmits battery monitor data. Inverter/charger data will follow soon. This is by default disabled, see Settings -> Services -> CAN-bus to enable it: (screenshot).
• Fix the Navico Fluid Level Sensor Fuel-0 PK, partno. 000-11518-001, not working. Broken in Venus OS v2.30.
• Support using a single-phase PV-inverter connected across a split-phase connection (no neutral). This is a common option in North America where a 240V or 208V PV-inverter is connected to a split-phase supply. Half of the Energy and power as reported by the PV Inverter is attributed to (reported on) L1 and the other 50% on L2.
• PV Inverters: add an option to disable automatic scanning
• Fix that Disabling the built-in WiFi Access Point also made the device to not connect to a WiFi network automatically as well. The workaround was to go into the WiFi menu, or (?) power cycle (I'm not 100% sure about this one). Now its fixed: disabling the built-in access point no longer affects how the device handles connecting to other access points.
• Restore relay state, when configured to be manually controlled, after a reboot. Rather then always resetting it to Open.
• Fix a mistake in the calculation behind the DC System box on the overview. The PV current was not added to the total, causing the value to be wrong. See "Has DC system" in the manual to see what the DC System Box is about.
• Fix bug that prevented setting entering certain IP Addresses. Thank you ScottB for finding this.

Added the IMT Solar Irradiance, temperature and wind meter

Looking for a good way to measure solar irradiance, we tried different meters, and eventually chose the professional irradiance meters from Mencke and Tegtmeyer GmbH in Germany. The type of meter supported are the Si-RS485TC series. They also feature an optional temperature sensor and wind meter. Connection to the GX device is done using our RS485 to USB cables.

Here is how the data is show on VRM. Note that this test system is currently still indoors, not much to see.

[image]

And here is how its visible on the GUI:

[image]

Clean-up of the System Setup and DVCC menus

The System Setup menus was becoming long and cluttered. Now there are two menus, all DVCC related features are in a separate menu. For those not familiar with DVCC: that setting changes the GX Device from a passive monitor, that takes data and makes it available for monitoring and analysis, into a active controller, that optimizes the charge process by taking control and sharing data between the connected devices. More info in the DVCC chapter in the manual. We do have some more textual and UI changes planned for that, later. For now, these screenshots show current status as in v2.40~34:

[image]

[image]

ModbusTCP

• Add menu to see last issues (screenshot!)
• Add Grid Loss alarm register (830)
• Add support for the EasySolar-II and MultiPlus-II GX by mapping the vebus service to unitid 228

MQTT settings cleaned up

• The previous setting, MQTT on LAN has been renamed to "MQTT on LAN (Plaintext)". There is a new setting called "MQTT on LAN (SSL)". The difference between Plaintext and SSL is just that: enabling the plain text one opens it on port 9001 (MQTT over websockets) and on port 1883 (pure MQTT) and the SSL one opens the encrypted variant of that on port 8883. Whats also new is that its now possible to enable MQTT for use on the local LAN, without also enabling the uplink to our cloud broker, which often was required. After the update, settings of existing systems are migrated such that nothing breaks. For details, see here: https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/issues/480.
• The very rarily used and specialty service 'NMEA2000 on MQTT' is now hidden under the superuser access level: we saw far too many people that had enabled that while they don't use it. And it increases CPU load.

More screenshots:

NMEA2000 out function:

[image]

Disabling automatic scanning of a PV Inverter

[image]

ModbusTCP Diagnostics - see the last error

[image]

ModbusTCP Diagnostics - see unitids

[image]

My new MultiPlus-II was damaged by the installer through reverse polarity. Can we buy a complete power supply circuit boards to replace the damaged one?

Hi there, i have a BMV and encounter a problem with charge efficiency. Peukert is set to 1.00 (i have a LiFePO4 Battery with 100AH) and during several weeks the SOC drifts extremly (SOC was shown 78% and i put on the charger but the battery was already full and then it synchronizied) ... the Problem is that if you only have partial charging (over some days/weeks) the SOC will drift away heavily. So i wish that i could set the Charge Efficiency in the BMV to 99.5% or something to have more accurate values.

Hi, Im trying to replicate the graph, which is available at vrm portal. I want to implement it in my total house dashboard in Grafana, toghether with water, gas and other consumptions.

I was successfull in catching mqtt stream and filtering out ACTUAL data for battery SoC, AC load, PV yield etc..., which is great! Its a very nice substitute for remote console. Path for the actual data looks like this for example: N/<myid>/system/0/Ac/ConsumptionOnOutput/L1/Power

Its very difficult to replicate the historical data though. Could you share, how you compile the graph and how you get the data? It would be a great help.

If I subscribe to this message, N/<myid>/solarcharger/256/History/Daily/0/Yield, I get slightly different numbers then in vrm graph. Even if I check some days back (Daily 1, Daily 2 etc) its always different. Also, I cant find data for the total AC consuption of the installation, total power to battery, from battery, direct use....

Thanks!

Vit

[image]

Grid showing or consumsion showing 0% i have colour control gx 712 bvm and victron inverter 12/2000/120 plus mppt 100/50 they are all linked to my controller . Its showing tho when i plug the shoreline but no more info on usage thank you hope you can help

example ( GX menus )

settings>services MQTT switch sets Dbus value

who watchs this dbus value and starts or stops this service.

I current have tasks that are loaded on booting and managed by the SVC daemonservice

which stop fine by disabling svc -d but have not found how the svc -u command is being set when the dbus service flag is again enabled.

please do not say svc ( daemonservice as this only monitors and maintains tasks if they stop )

are services like MQTT always in memory and just put into a blocking or sleep mode when service is disabled?

Why does my MPPT 100/20 shut the load off when I enable DVCC? Cant get it back on, unless turn dvcc feature off. Tried with ”always on”, and the batterylife management options. Load controll stays off no matter what, untill i turn dvcc off.

Venus gx with release candidate FW, MPPT 100/20 with most recent FW and BVM712 with most recent fw.

Problem started when i upgraded most recent fw to bmv, it gave low battery alarm and when i tried to reset that alarm from several places, it didnt let mppt load control to go back on.

Thanks for implementing battery current update in latest MPPT firmware version. It nicely complements allowing adaptive absorption time to be turned off (useful for my Lithium with very variable charge rates).

What response should I receive from MPPT firmware version 1.44 when updating the Battery Charge Current with Hex Protocol. Register is 0x200A

0x200A Battery charge current (*8) 0.001 sn32 A

I think I'm receiving "1" which looks promising but I'm more used to seeing the new setting echoed back to me when changing values.

Sent:- :80A200030F8FFFFFD which represents 2 amps.

Returned:- :80A200122

Does this response indicate update successful?

I want to connect a BlueSolar MPPT 150/70 CAN and a BlueNova battery to a GX device. According to the BlueNova page on the VE site https://www.victronenergy.com/live/battery_compatibility:bluenova

Select the VE.Can & CAN-bus BMS (250 kbaud) CAN-profile in the CCGX. Menu path: Settings → Services → CAN-profile. Note that this changes the function of a VE.Can port: it is not possible to connect both VE.Can products and a Bluenova battery together.

Andre has informed me that I should use a Venus GX as it has 2 CAN bus ports. What is not obvious from the documentation on the web is which CAN bus port on the Venus GX to use with which device.

Also, the second CAN bus port only has a 3 way connector and is not isolated. Can a non-isolated port be used? What is the cable connection to the 8 way CAN bus port on the Battery or the MPPT?

According to this post: https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/19500/bluesolar-mppt-15085-can-bus-batrium-bms.html, the Venus GX cannot control the BlueSolar MPPT 150/70 CAN. If this is the case, then is there any merit in connecting it at all?

Is there any information available on the changes and extended frame formats being used.extended canbus-bms protocol (not used yet)

extended canbus-bms protocol (not used yet)

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

I was informed that remote administration/configuration of venus connected ve direct decices is palnned for the victronconnect app.

any information on when this will be?

its realy something we need... :-)

Would it be possible to integrate NTP or NTP-SEC into CCGX firmware, as this would make an excellent addition thus enabling accurate timing of computers and radio equipment on board

My system:

ESS configuration with grid meter.

ALL latest firmware.

RPi 3B+ Venus v2.33

SmartSolar MPPT 150/35

Multiplus 2 48/4000/35

DIY Lion Battery.

RPi -> Victron RS485 USB dongle -> ET112

All other connections as standard (mppt (VE.direct USB dongle), multiplus (MK3 USB dongle)).

So, all working fine for weeks. However, remote console this morning showed all devices detected apart from grid meter?

What are my options?

How do I check the RS485 dongle is working correctly, are there errors signalled by the flashing leds. No green leds are flashing just the red one every few seconds.

When I unplug and plug the dongle the green led flashes once and then the red led flashes 8 times then pauses then flashes 15 or so time? Any clues.

The ET112, seems to be fine but how do I test the data is being sent?

Have rebooted RPi, no joy.

Any ideas would be most welcome.

Hello again all,

After releasing v2.40~34 on October 10th, now we've released v2.40~37 for testing.

If you don't know what this post is about: this is about our GX Product range, and this post is aimed at all the members of the Beta test group. See this information on how to join (and leave) that group is here.

Enjoy the testing. If you see any issues, please post below. Thank you.

Matthijs

Changes from v2.40~34 to v2.40~37

Bug fixes

• Fix race condition that made Remote Firmware updates and/or Remote VEConfigure not always work. Bug was introduced earlier in the v2.40 development. Thank you @Elimac for reporting.
• Fix bug that caused far too much logging for systems with a IMT Solar Irradiation sensor. Thanks @Mark for reporting. Introduced in v2.40 development.
• DVCC / Share Current Sense:
  • fix bug that caused the current to be sent a factor 100 too small to the solar chargers. Introduced in v2.40 development.
  • also send the current to the VE.Can Smart Chargers. (ie. the new models introduced in last months).
• Fix bug in VE.Can driver that made it necessary to do an extra reboot after an update. Bug was introduced during v2.40 development. Thanks at various people for reporting.
• Fix jittering alarm on Z-Cell Redflow batteries. Thanks to Simon for reporting

New features

• Add notification when solar charger firmware or inverter/charger firmware is too old for use with DVCC.
• Add notification when multiple managed battery systems are connected while using DVCC. It can handle only one; not multiple at a time.
• Octo GX and Venus GX: the push button do things (reset network settings as well as enable/disable the wifi access point, I'll elaborate later). And the LED now shows the WiFi Access Point state.
• Add transmitting inverter/charger data to the new NMEA2000-out function
• Identify BYD B-Box L battery separately; to distinguish it in the VRM Device List page from the Pro batteries.

Under the hood changes:

• Update Sunxi Linux kernel to latest 4.19 release
• Prepare for new GX Device
• Add system response time monitoring
• Add extended canbus-bms protocol (not used yet)

end.

For earlier changes in v2.40; see previous post.

Hi

I added a number of additional alarms to my software.

for lowcellvoltage and highcellvoltage. their states are displayed correctly in my new qml files.

I have logging working but do not have notications working on the GX web interface.

can anyone provide guidance here

Hi

i have been trying to get the following file - but web address appears restricted.

https://svn.victronenergy.com/viewvc/vrm_database/trunk/dataAttributes%20en%20deviceTypes.xlsm?revision=511&view=co).
[dataAttributes en deviceTypes.xlsm] That excelsheet has a macro to generate the code in datalist.py

for recreating datalist.py for additional logging points

regards K

PS a question for victron

I think going forward this will be a very popular question: How to combine/integrate a Wallbox-Charger in/with an ESS System? What I'm not looking for are answers like: use the internal relay of a MultiPlus to turn on the charger when the ESS Battery is full.

It should be a smart integration in which the user can dynamically set the priorities, like:

1. charge the e-car using the remaining PV-power (ESS battery has 1. priority)
2. charge the e-car using all available PV-power (ESS battery has last priority)
3. charge the e-car as fast as possible

Options 1 and 2 would mean that the charging performance is constantly changing.

-----

Possible solution: use an external control unit which communicates with ESS and the Wallbox via Modbus. A control unit could be an OpenHAB system. I'm using such a system successfully for my smart home... A programmable Wallbox could be KEBA P30 x-Series.
The idea is to write a simple script which constantly reads some ESS figures, calculates the remaining power and sets charging power within the Wallbox. Option 1 could be realized quite easy, I guess. Any objections? Option 2 is more complex, but I think it could be solved as well. Option 3 is done without involving the ESS.

-----

Now, the big questions are: has anybody out there done this task already and can share the solution? if not, what other ideas do you have to solve the above challenge?

Many thanks in advance!

Hello,

is there a way how to send and receive CAN messages via Venus GX from/to remote server?

I think that it should be doable via root access to Venus and writing a bridge (e.g. in Python) to send some range of CAN messages to remote server and vice versa.

As a BMS developer I would like to use Venus as a bridge to administer and control the BMS (change parameters, read all cells, upgrade FW...). At the moment we are using USR ethernet bridge to UART to communicate with BMS from our server, but this requires additional ETH port (usually a switch then) and costs more and is more work to wire everything...

I do not want to write this complete thing from scratch - so I ask, maybe there is already something ready to use? I made quick search but have not found anything. Maybe some doc is already somewhere? or Venus GX programmers have something prepared for this purpose?

thank you for any hint on this

p.s. I can share our Python webserver which communicates to BMS clients and keeps connections. Maybe someting like this can be added to VRM portal

Petr

Is there a way to quickly turn off graphs when many graphs have been selected? Would a Minus (-) in the top RHS of each graph be a good addition?

Thanks

Hello!

Has anyone had any luck getting Venus (OS) images booting, or the VRM reporting packages running on a NanoPI? I just tried flashing the latest nanopi images but it doesn't pull a DHCP address, looking to attach a console cable and see where it's failing.

With the new firmware and Gird Down reporting enabled, I recieve an email and an audible alarm when the grid fails which is great, thank you Victron for that update!

I would now love to know what MQTT topic to subscribe to for this alert. MQTT is something I have fairly little experience with, so any help is appreciated... I am subscribed to N/985******5e7/battery/258/Soc for battery SOC, N/985******5e7/pvinverter/20/Ac/Power for PV Inverter output, etc... Can anyone point me to the right path for the grid status?

Hi,

I need to connect the Smartsolar MPPT to a 3rd party Modbus gateway.

Can I do this by connecting the MPPT to the VE.Direct Bluetooth Smart dongle and then use a 3rd party Bluetooth to Modbus converter to connect it to the 3rd party Modbus gateway?

Regards,

Deepak

Hi

Does anyone know what GPIO ports are used for the digital inputs and for the relay outputs on a RPi to replicate the functionality of a real Venus?

I've trolled through all the sites I can think of and come up blank. Anyone cracked it?

Any guidance greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Phil

dear all

fyi
after the mandatory update on my smart mppt 100/50 to 1.46

VRM does not show all device on Venus 2.40~34

when Venus 2.33 was re installed

every thing was shown again

VRM id b827eb2a6f77