VE.Smart to VRM or other remote monitoring?

DIY
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1

Hi. I am dealing with a lot of different batteries that need regular charging. No solar or anything. I am using several different victron chargers for this purpose that get swapped between batteries, all of which support VE.smart. Monitoring all these chargers works great when I am in Bluetooth range. However, I would like to be able to monitor them remotely (out of Bluetooth range in same location, or even from an entirely different location) so I’ll know when a battery has finished charging. Is there a way to feed the VE.smart data into VRM? If not VRM, are there other (DIY perhaps) existing solutions that could achieve the same result? E.g. a raspberry pi that connects to the chargers via Bluetooth, and can serve up a webpage with current status or something of that nature?

Thanks!

2

Possibly the Victron Global Link
Not all products support the Bluetooth interface so make sure you read the documentation carefully to be sure that your products are compatible-

3

Thanks. And yes, I looked into that one. But it doesn’t seem my battery chargers are supported? Fwiw, I have several Blue Smart IP22, IP65 and IP67 chargers, in both 12V and 24V versions.

Since yesterday I also discovered the victron open source page at: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/open_source:start

Lots of interesting stuff there. Haven’t had a chance to look into all of it yet, but not sure that there’s anything that does what I’m looking for? Will keep looking though.

If anyone has specific suggestions, let me know!? Thx!

4

You might also be interested in this - Victron Bluetooth advertising protocol - VictronEnergy

5

I found an old Android tablet with a 4g SIM slot and installed Victron Connect on it. This gave me local BT control of all my devices. I then installed a data SIM and TeamViewer Host on the tablet and TeamViewer on my phone which enabled me to connect to it from anywhere.
You will need a tablet earlier than Android 8 as 10 doesn’t support remote unattended access. This also means using an earlier version of Connect as the latest is Android 8 or later. Also be prepared that TeamViewer may flag as commercial use and demand payment, I took them on and it’s still free a year later😉

On another tack the later IP22 chargers have an internal connection for VE Direct all that is required is a cable to connect them to a unit running Venus OS. I suspect the others may have similar.