Ok, so I have an idea… I have a Raspberry Pie running VenusOS on it. I have a tank that is far away from my Raspberry Pie and I don’t want to run a super long sensor cable from the tank to my Raspberry Pie where the GX Tank 140 is connected via USB.
So my idea is to use a pie zero or similar to act as a USB over IP Server using linux “usbip” and then installing the same on the Raspberry Pie that is running my Victron Cerbo system.
Then I bind the USB port over IP from the GX Tank 140 to the Pie running VenusOS. Hopefully the software will pick up the GX Tank 140 and all will work well.
This would be a good idea for other people who have tanks in remote locations but access to WIFI/Ethernet so there is no need to run a super long sensor wire.
Would be cool if Victron made a WIFI or Ethernet (with PoE) enabled tank sensor.
Nice but I don’t know the protocol the GX TANK is talking via USB so I can’t get any raw data to then send over mqtt… I’m trying to make a USB bridge over IP instead with one RPI running USBIP as server with the tank sensor connected on its USB port and the other running VenusOS also with USBIP as the client so it can see the remote tank sensor…
Ok I came up with a good plan and it works… I installed NodeRed on both my Cerbo’s (both running on Raspberry Pi), plugged the tank sensor into the “remote” Pi.
Then in NodeRed I made a UDP out node for the tank level (on the remote) and then received this into my “local” Cerbo via NodeRed.
Then I created a virtual device in Node Red as a Tank Sensor on the local Cerbo and injected the received tank levels into VRM. So now I can see my remote tank level on my local Cerbo and on VRM.
Hope this helps someone else.. Just buy a Raspberry Pi / Cerbo and as long as they are on the same network , you can use UDP to transfer the info between Cerbos so you have it all in one place and one VRM Dashboard.
