Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their battery data, or is it overkill?

Been running a Pi Zero 2W in my shepherd's hut setup for about eight months now and honestly it's the best thing I've added to the whole system.

Pulling data from my Victron SmartShunt via a USB-to-VE.Direct cable into InfluxDB, then visualising it all through Grafana. Sounds fancier than it is — took me a weekend to get sorted and most of that was me being thick about config files.

The main thing I'd say to anyone on the fence: it's not overkill if you actually care about patterns over time. The Victron app shows you now, but it doesn't really help you understand your seasonal trends, how your Fogstar Lithium cells behave in cold snaps, that sort of thing. Grafana dashboards let me see exactly when my 200W of Renogy panels start underperforming — usually mid-November when the tree shadow kicks in.

A few things worth knowing if you go down this route:

• SD card wear is real — run the OS from a USB stick instead
• Set your data retention policies in InfluxDB early or it'll balloon
• A decent UPS hat (I use the Pisugar) stops corrupt writes when the battery dips

Does anyone else have theirs pulling data from multiple sources? I'd like to add a weather station feed eventually and correlate it with generation. Wondering if anyone's already cracked that.

@HeatherGazer not overkill at all — it's the difference between guessing and knowing.

Got a Pi 4 running in my static caravan pulling from a Victron SmartShunt and a couple of DS18B20 temperature sensors on the Fogstar Drift cells. Logging to InfluxDB, displaying on Grafana. Looked absolutely mental to set up first time but now I can see exactly when my fridge compressor kicks in and murders the SoC overnight.

The moment that changed everything for me — woke up one February morning to find the batteries had hit 9°C during the night. Would never have known without the logging. Tweaked the heating schedule the next day.

Real-world data from your actual system beats any spreadsheet calculation hands down. Once you've got it running you'll never go back to just staring at a shunt display wondering what happened at 3am.

Ran a Pi 3B+ for about six months logging SmartShunt data via the VE.Direct cable. Worked fine until I started questioning whether the overhead was justified for what's essentially a static installation.

Switched to an ESP32 in the end — fraction of the power draw, talks directly to the Victron kit, pushes to Home Assistant over MQTT. The Pi was consuming around 2-3W continuously which, on a marginal winter day, actually matters on a small system like mine.

Worth asking yourself what you're actually doing with the data rather than just collecting it. I found I was logging everything and analysing almost nothing until I narrowed down to maybe four key metrics.

Not dismissing the Pi approach — @FellKev's point about knowing vs guessing is fair. Just wouldn't assume it's the only route.

Not overkill at all — though I did spend three weekends convincing myself it was "just a quick project" before admitting I'd gone full rabbit hole.

Mine's a Pi 4 sat in the garden office pulling from a Victron SmartShunt and a couple of BMV readings. Grafana dashboard on an old tablet on the wall. The miss

Really interested in this thread — I'm in the middle of setting up a shepherd's hut build and logging has been on my mind.

@DucatoProject what did you start questioning after six months? That's roughly where I'd expect teething issues to creep in.

Also wondering whether the Pi Zero 2W (@HeatherGazer's choice) is actually sufficient for this job or whether the lower spec causes any lag in data collection? I've been eyeing up whether to just go straight to a Pi 4 but feels like overkill if I'm only polling the SmartShunt and maybe a BMV-712 down the line.

Does anyone have this pushing data into Home Assistant, or are most people running something custom? Seen a few mentions of Venus OS on a Pi as an alternative — curious whether that's worth considering over a DIY logging solution.