Raspberry pi 3b+ and venus os, cut off hdmi output

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1

Hello I have a venus os on raspberry pi 3b+ and it is said to have a 0.1a consumption (detected by smartshunt).

Bluetooth is disabled

I use only Ethernet and I have 3 USB devices connected (smart solar and 2 smartshunt).

I read that I could disable hdmi to reduce more the consumption. Do I need to do this or is the hdmi already disabled on venus os ?

I also increase the period of vrm connection (from 15 to 30 minutes).

If there are other mean I could be happy to know them.

In winter I have very low solar input and the raspberry is draining my batteries.

2

You can slowdown the Ethernet to 100Mb to reduce the power consumption.

0.1 Amp is from 48 volt?

3

Around 4W with power supply is normal.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W has less power consumption

This is also true in smaller systems :wink:

You can run the system without venus.os device instead.

4

0.1a is for 24v.

I was said 3w for the raspberry pi 3b+ so 3w/24 = 0.125a so the current consumption I have seems to be correct. Right ?

No way to cut of hdmi ? Or it I already cut of by default ? I don’t have any screen connected.

5

Your proposal is to cut off my raspberry pi during winter ? If yes I can’t monitor my batteries during winter (I don’t live there).

Maybe is there a way to put in sleep mode the venus os during the night ?

6

If You are ready to loose “close to real time” alarms, than one of the ways to to survive the winter could be to correctly shut down the Raspi and wake up it to send the telemetry by means of some timer.

I’m testing at the moment ELTAKO 2 channel timer S2U12DBT-UC. The system in question is remote and struggles during winter, so idea is to switch off everything except charge controller, than wake system up once per day for some 15 min, get data, than switch all off (except charger).

Timer has 2 independent latching relays and has self consumption of 0.1 - 0.3 W, so it could spare about 60 Wh per day.

You could use one relay to tell Venus Os to shutdown, after a while to switch off the power using second relay - it could be bad to just “pull the plug”.

… And for fine tuning at low current I suggest to use multimeter, the Shunt is too ignorant to small changes.

7

Globallink 520 or the old LoRaWan unit have very low power consumption

Perhaps could you use the streetlight or loas output function for that

€50!

8

Thanks for the proposal. About telemetry, I know I can easily configure the period of transmission : by default 15 min.

But what about the recording period of data of peripheral connected using ve direct ? Can it be tuned ?

I know these data can be recorded even without Ethernet connection and transmitted to vrm when Ethernet connection is available. Maybe what I think is the vrm transmission period is the data recording period ?

Your proposal is to wake up the venus os each 15 minutes so data resolution would be 15 minutes. Instead of ?

9

Thanks. globallink 520 is kind of cerbo gx + Ethernet connection ? Am I correct ? Or maybe there is no venus os in the global link ?

I don’t understand this: “Perhaps could you use the streetlight or loas output function for that”

10

I my case the system will be down (except the SCC) for 23 h 45 min, then 15 min to collect couple of data points, establish mobile connection, transmit data and go to “off” again.

11

It is a shame that this delay is so expensive I already put a lot of money in my victron devices :frowning:

But it is a great idea. Currently the load output of my victron mppt is used for the raspberry and it is cut off each day when the voltage is too low (below 2.4v). So as you said it may be bad for the venus os or the raspberry pi I don’t know :frowning: Maybe it is possible to write a script to shut down the venus os each day at a specific time to have it shutdown before the voltage is too low.

12

I’m happily using https://github.com/kwindrem/GuiMods , starting with SetupHelper.

There is ShutdownMonitor, it activates one of Digital In lines as dedicated “Off” switch (button to minus/ground pin), as well as menu item on Remote console.

I’m still happy enough, but it’s is said many time that by just switching off the power to Raspi, You could ruin SD card. Think of it as pulling the plug on any PC.

I’m still curious how Cerbo and alike survives - some magic from Victron ? :slight_smile:

Screenshot from 2026-01-03 11-08-35
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13

Globallink 520 is a own system with build in LTE connection, see productpage.

You could use the streetlight or load output function to switch the raspi on or off.
A lot of functions are then lost, of course.