I really love Victron products and have migrated to the ecosystem for my sailboat . Last year I was playing with RPi running venus_os. I came across the limitation of certain products requiring hardwire data connection to properly function in the venus_os environment. Sailboats have tight spaces with mile of wires running and the last thing I want to do is run more wires if say I want to monitor a current via smartshunt and view it remotely via VRM. I found inexpensive programmable wireless transmitter/receivers with serial capability and adapted them to the ve.direct connection. On the “producer” side, I used the 3.3V ve.direct V+, to power the device. On the “consumer” side, there is no DC voltage available on the ve.direct connector, so I tapped into the harness and brought in 3.3VDC to the transceiver via a very small, very inexpensive DC-DC converter. The system works and looks exactly like a ve.direct connection to the system. So far I have only tried it at home and as far as upstairs to basement connection, but it seems stable and reliable. One thing I encountered was that “producer” devices may or may not be compatible with the 3.3V power (one device oscillated when connected to the transceiver), but when powered externally on both sides, the system is rock-solid. Anyway a photo of the “virtual” cable is attached (one end is configured to interface to a usb-ve.direct adapter for testing). I’m going to install on the boat this weekend and see about long-term reliability. Each transceiver draws about 15 ma @ 3.3V or 4 ma through the DC-DC converter at 12VDC input, so they are low power. They operate in matched pairs. I think there is another thread using ESP32 devices, but this solution is more or less turnkey once the devices are paired. The devices can be configured with on-board or external antennas. I’m still evaluating the ranges of both. I thought I’d post to see if anyone else has tried this and my search skills are just weak.
