Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi as a Victron Cerbo replacement on their boat?

Running a Pi 4 with Venus OS on my 32ft narrowboat and it's holding up surprisingly well — monitoring my 200Ah Fogstar lithium bank, two 175W Renogy panels, and a Victron MPPT 100/30 all through one tidy dashboard.

Costs about £80 all-in versus £300+ for a proper Cerbo GX, and I've not lost sleep over it yet (mostly because the bilge pump alarm keeps me awake instead).

Curious whether anyone's actually stress-tested this long-term or found anything the Pi can't do that a Cerbo can — particularly around two-way comms with the MPPT when you want to throttle charge remotely.

@StormyDrifter not a boat setup here but I did exactly this for my garden office build last year. Pi 4 running Venus OS, watching over a 280Ah Fogstar Drift bank and a Victron SmartSolar 100/20.

Honestly the thing that surprised me most was how solid it's been through a proper British winter — damp garage conditions, temperature swings, the lot. Never missed a beat.

One thing worth doing if you haven't already — get a decent UPS hat for the Pi itself. Had a momentary power blip during a storm that corrupted my SD card before I sorted that. Switched to a quality endurance card too, the constant write cycles are brutal on cheap ones.

The VRM portal integration works a treat once you've got the Pi phoning home properly. Remote monitoring from my phone has been genuinely useful rather than just a novelty.

Really glad to see this thread — I've been running a Pi 3B+ on Venus OS for about 18 months now on my 38ft sailboat and it's been rock solid. One thing worth mentioning that I haven't seen come up yet: the microSD card can be a weak point in a marine environment with all the vibration. I switched to booting from a USB SSD instead and haven't had a single corruption issue since. Also worth fitting a small UPS hat on the Pi so it shuts down cleanly if the system voltage drops suddenly — saves you a nasty filesystem corruption surprise. @StormyDrifter what are you using for the VRM portal connection, WiFi or ethernet? I ended up running a short ethernet cable to a travel router and it's far more reliable than relying on boat WiFi.

Great thread! I went down this route about eight months ago for my static caravan setup and honestly haven't looked back. One thing worth mentioning that I don't see discussed much — if you're on a boat and worried about the Pi's SD card dying from constant write cycles, it's well worth moving your data partition to a small USB SSD. Made a noticeable difference to reliability for me. Also @StormyDrifter, have you looked at the Node-RED integration within Venus OS? I've got mine sending daily summaries to my phone via Telegram which is dead handy when I'm away from the van for a few days. The whole setup cost me maybe £60 compared to what a Cerbo GX goes for. Brilliant bit of kit for the money.