Hi everyone,
I built Boardstrom over the past several months for my own Sprinter and it’s gotten polished enough to share. Wanted to put it in front of this community since you’re the audience that actually understands what it does and why it might be useful.
The short version: it’s a phone or tablet app that reads your Victron system’s Instant Readout BLE advertisements directly and shows them as a live dashboard. No GX device, no VRM account, no internet, no cloud, no data collection. The numbers stay on the device.
Why I built it
I wanted the at-a-glance dashboard view VRM gives you (SOC, solar, battery power, consumption, history charts) without the dependencies it requires: a Cerbo or other GX device, internet connectivity, an online account. For an off-grid Sprinter that often has no signal, the cloud dependency was the wrong tradeoff. Instant Readout already broadcasts most of what a dashboard needs, locally, every couple of seconds. It just needs parsing.
How it works (technical)
- Pure passive BLE scanning, no connections established, so it doesn’t interfere with VictronConnect or anything else
- Parses the manufacturer-specific Instant Readout advertisement payloads per Victron’s documented format
- AES-CTR decryption per advertisement using the encryption key you get from VictronConnect (open device, Settings, Product Info, “Instant Readout via Bluetooth”, tap Show next to the key)
- Currently supports the readout types I have hardware for: BatteryMonitor (SmartShunt, BMV), SolarCharger (SmartSolar MPPT), DcDcConverter (Orion XS), Inverter (Phoenix), VeBus (MultiPlus, Quattro)
- Aggregates per-device readings into a system view: SOC, solar input, battery power, loads. The loads number is derived via an energy balance at the DC bus rather than measured directly, with the alternator and shore split handled separately when those signals are present
- 7 days of local history, downsampled (10s sampling for the most recent 24h, 5-minute averages after that)
The “old device as dashboard” angle
Because the app is fully offline and BLE-only, it works really well on whatever old iPad, iPhone, or Android tablet you have lying around. Mount it somewhere in the van, cabin, or galley, plug it in, leave it on. You get a permanent live dashboard of your system without ever connecting that device to the internet. Demo Mode in Settings lets you see what it looks like before you set anything up, which is useful if you want to evaluate it without pairing anything yet.
Free vs Pro
Free supports one device with a 1-hour history chart, which is enough to evaluate it on a real system. Pro is a one-time purchase that unlocks multi-device (read every device on your system at once), full 12h, 24h, and 7-day history, persistent history across app restarts, and multiple system groups for people running more than one setup like a van and a boat. Pro is genuinely optional; free is fully functional for a one-device setup.
Status
iOS is in App Store review and should be live in a few days. Android is mid closed-testing on Google Play.
If you’d like to try the beta now, opt in here: Beta testing — Boardstrom . The page covers both Android closed testing and iOS TestFlight access, and Pro is free for the test period.
Short clip of it pairing with a SmartSolar and reading live data: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TC-35yaHOCw
Happy to answer technical questions about the implementation, the decryption, supported readout types, the loads derivation, or anything else. Feedback on what you’d want next is very welcome.
Disclaimer: independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Victron Energy B.V. Built it for my own system, sharing because others might want the same thing.