PID numbers and 3rd party products

Modifications
, ,
1

Hi,
I am looking at the VE.Direct protocol and am confused about how Victron use the PID number when dealing with 3rd party products. (Non-Victron)

I would be very glad if someone could help me understand:

  1. Can a third party product use a custom VE.Direct PID?
  2. Is there any kind of of third party products PID numbers register?
  3. Can a third party vendor register a new VE.Direct PID number at Victron? (Or anywhere else?)
  4. How does a Cerbo HX device handle a non_Victron PID number?
  5. If the Cerbo GX can not recognize a non Victron device, is there any way to provide product info to the Cerbo manually? (Like manufacturer name, product name, device type etc)

If anyone could share some light over this I would be very happy. I guess a 3rd party device should not use a reserved Victron device PID number to avoid unfortunate mix-ups?

Thank you all in advance!

/Teddy

2

The product ID number used on VE direct is used to classify the type of product connected, and some of the basic capacities of the device. There are other registers that give detailed performance capabilities, depending on type.

Not really. VE direct is only intended for use with Victron products, not 3rd party products.

No.

Again no.

I don’t think it will.

Yes, this can be done, usually by writing a custom driver that interfaces with the Victron dbus message system. It may also be possible to implement this from Node red.

VE-Direct is a very specific Victron protocol, though it may be possible to implement a translation device if you really need to connect a 3rd party device that does provide some data output. How you do this is up to you, but it won’t be supported by Victron.