Update to Venus 3.67 Large failed completely

Q&A and troubleshooting
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1

Shortly before Christmas, for what felt like the hundredth time, several Node-RED nodes in the Large version of Venus OS were disabled again, even though I had already blocked all updates. I therefore decided to update to 3.67.

Unfortunately, this caused significant additional problems. The same nodes were disabled again, and on top of that: the Tasmota meter is no longer reachable, the Victron MPPT 150 charger appears passive, the Multiplus II no longer works as expected, the AC inverter that was integrated via a Shelly is no longer operational, and my passwords on the GX were reset. Due to a broken GX frontend I am currently unable to set new passwords. As a result, I will have to completely reflash the GX.

I would like to share this feedback with the Victron team in the hope that these issues can be analyzed and the stability of Venus OS Large and Node-RED integrations improved in future releases.

UPDATE:
Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my experience upgrading a Raspberry Pi 3B based ESS system (Waveshare CAN HAT, Pylontech US3000C, MQTT Grid Meter, Shelly PV Inverter).

Timeline & Issues:

  1. v3.13 (Stable): Starting point. System ran stable for a long time. But: Some nodes were blocked again and again by some hidden updates.

  2. Update to v3.67: Resulted in an unstable system / boot loops on the RPi 3B. A bad idea.

  3. Rollback to v3.13: Restored temporary functionality to gain time. Some drivers were updated and didn’t work any more at this old version.

  4. Attempt with v3.64: Still experienced instability/compatibility issues with the RPi 3B hardware/kernel. Impossible to include the CAN-HAT and therefore the battery. ESS-System needed to be reinstalled directly on the Multiplus.

  5. Downgrade to v3.55 (Current Stable): This version proved to be solid and compatible. ESS-System needed to be reinstalled directly on the Multiplus II, but Tasmota MQTT, MPPT150, PV-Inverter via Shelly and the battery via CAN is working. This is my golden version. I will block the communication to the Victron servers.

Integration Steps on v3.55:

  • CAN-HAT (Waveshare 12MHz): Required specific config.txt overlays (dtoverlay=mcp2515-can0,oscillator=12000000,interrupt=25) and setting the VE.Can service to 500 kbit/s BMS.

  • Grid Meter: Successfully integrated using dbus-mqtt-grid (Tasmota head reading meter).​

  • PV Inverter: Integrated Shelly devices using Halmand’s dbus-shelly-1pm-pvinverter.​

  • Node-RED: Had to re-install node-red-contrib-shelly and re-link Victron nodes (Service ID mismatch after fresh install).​

  • Storage: Moved VRM database (vrmlogger-backlog.sqlite3) and Node-RED logs to USB stick to spare the SD card.​

Conclusion:
For RPi 3B users, v3.55 seems to be the sweet spot for stability right now, while v3.6x versions caused significant issues in my setup. Perplexity said, I spend 14 hours on this issues, but it was much more time. My holidays were wasted.

2

my system also made updates although not allowed

i needed several hours to fix it - just in the badest time where i had other things to do

I´,m thinking of blocking Internet Access

3

Please add some more information about your systems.

Where/how did you block updates? Normally It should be enough to disable the update check in the settings of the GX device.

But I’m not sure if nodes are getting updated independently from the GX FW.

4

i had the problem twice this year, last time about 10 weeks ago

on my system i have additional software (dbus-serialbattery, setuphelper for a TFT Display), realized it wasn´t working anymore, GUI V1 had the known white screen problem

This happened because Venus OS was updated in background

In the settings i selected Firmware - Online Updates - only check

I´m also using Venus Large, i also had the situation that the SSH password was reset

Maybe interesting, maybe not - Venus OS was running on a raspberry - i switched to a Cerbo now