500A Smart shunt with 2 ve direct outputs?

Been wrestling with a similar wiring headache on my garden office setup and wondered if anyone else has hit this wall.

My 500A Smart Shunt is currently sending data to a Cerbo GX via VE.Direct, which works a treat — but I want to also pull that same SOC data into a Raspberry Pi running Node-RED for some custom automation (controlling a dump load heater when the batteries are topped up, that sort of thing).

The problem is obvious: one VE.Direct port, two destinations.

A few options I've been mulling over:

• VE.Direct to USB cable into the Cerbo, then somehow scrape the data via MQTT on the local network — but that feels like going the long way round
• VE.Direct Bluetooth dongle on the shunt instead, then use the Victron Connect app or a BLE-to-MQTT bridge on the Pi — has anyone actually done this reliably?
• Just fitting a second shunt purely for the Pi feed, which seems daft given the cost

From what I can tell, Victron don't make a VE.Direct splitter as such — the protocol is point-to-point rather than a bus. Happy to be corrected on that though.

Running Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 cells if that matters, so accurate SOC tracking is fairly critical rather than just a nice-to-have.

Has anyone cracked this cleanly without bodging it? Particularly interested if there's a neat solution that doesn't involve the GX device as the middleman for everything.

@SaltyRigger the 500A SmartShunt only has one VE.Direct port, full stop. Victron haven't blessed us with two, despite what some forum threads from 2019 might suggest 🙄

Your options as I see it:

• Run a VE.Direct to USB cable into the Cerbo's USB port alongside the existing VE.Direct connection
• Use Bluetooth for the second "output" — the VictronConnect app will happily read it simultaneously
• Stick a VE.Direct to USB cable on a Raspberry Pi running Venus OS if you're feeling adventurous

Personally on my cabin setup I've got the SmartShunt wired direct to the Cerbo and just use Bluetooth for local monitoring on my phone. Works a treat.

The hardware limitation isn't going anywhere, so pick your workaround and crack on with it!

Hey @SaltyRigger, @CamperSam is spot on about the single VE.Direct port limitation. Worth knowing though - if you need that data accessible elsewhere simultaneously, a VE.Direct to USB cable feeding into a Raspberry Pi running Venus OS could bridge the gap nicely. The Cerbo stays connected as normal via VE.Direct, and you can pull the same data over the network through MQTT or Modbus TCP to whatever secondary device needs it. Bit more faff to set up initially but works a treat once it's running. Alternatively, if your secondary display is Bluetooth-capable, the SmartShunt does broadcast over BT at the same time as VE.Direct, so you'd have two data streams without any extra hardware. Might solve your headache depending on what you're actually trying to connect to. What's the second device you're wanting to feed?

@SaltyRigger Worth clarifying what you're actually trying to achieve here, because the solution rather depends on it.

On my narrowboat I ran into precisely this territory when I wanted both a Cerbo GX and a direct USB readout at my charging station. The answer that actually worked was the VE.Direct to USB cable into the Cerbo's USB port — the Cerbo then handles aggregation, and your second "output" becomes a question of what the Cerbo pushes downstream (VRM, MQTT, Modbus, etc.).

If you're trying to get data to two separate systems simultaneously without a Cerbo in the chain, that's a fundamentally different problem and the SmartShunt simply won't oblige with its single port. You'd need to rethink the architecture rather than chase a hardware workaround that doesn't exist.

What's the actual end destination for the second data feed?

Great to see a new face on the forum, @SaltyRigger — welcome aboard!

@SophieFisher raises the key question. To add a practical angle: on my narrowboat I had the same temptation to run dual outputs from the SmartShunt, but once everything was routed through the Cerbo GX, I realised the Cerbo itself handles data distribution to VictronConnect, VRM, and any connected displays. You likely don't need a second VE.Direct port if the Cerbo is already in the loop.

What's the second device you're trying to feed? If it's something like a Color Control or a standalone display, there may be a cleaner solution via the Cerbo's networking rather than fighting the hardware limitations.