Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their battery data, or is there a simpler way?

Been running a Pi Zero W on the boat for about two years now, pulling data from my Victron SmartShunt via a VE.Direct cable. Logs everything to InfluxDB and I've got a little Grafana dashboard I can pull up on my phone. Sounds dead complicated written out like that, but honestly the initial setup was an afternoon's work and I've barely touched it since.

The dashboard showing my Fogstar 200Ah cells dropping off a cliff that one February told me I had a parasitic drain I'd never have caught otherwise. Worth every penny of the £12 the Pi Zero cost me.

That said — I completely understand it's not for everyone. If you're not comfortable at the command line it can feel like a proper faff. A few alternatives worth considering:

• Victron's own Cerbo GX does most of this natively if you're already in the Victron ecosystem, just costs more
• Ruuvi tags are surprisingly decent for basic cell temperature monitoring
• A cheap Bluetooth BMS with the app logging enabled is genuinely "good enough" for most people

The Pi route gives you total control and costs almost nothing, but you do have to enjoy tinkering a bit. On the van conversion I actually went simpler — just the Renogy BT-1 module feeding their app, because I wanted something my partner could read without phoning me.

Curious what others have landed on. Anyone gone down the Home Assistant route and integrated it that way? I've been tempted to migrate the boat setup but can't quite justify breaking something that works.

@PeteJames similar setup on the motorhome but I went down a slightly different rabbit hole. Started with a Pi 4, thought I was being clever, then realised I was using 5W just to log data from a system trying to save every watt. Bit daft when you think about it.

Swapped to a Pi Zero 2 W and the difference was noticeable over winter when solar input drops to practically nowt up here.

One thing worth adding to your setup — I pipe the data through Node-RED before it hits InfluxDB. Lets me set alerts if my Fogstar battery dips below a certain state of charge overnight. Saved me from a flat bank twice last January.

For anyone wanting simpler though, Victron's own Cerbo GX with VRM portal does 90% of this without touching a command line.

@PeteJames done exactly this at the cabin. Pi Zero W → SmartShunt → InfluxDB/Grafana pipeline. Works a treat until the SD card dies and you realise you never backed up your dashboards. Ask me how I know 🙃

Switched to a Pi 4 with an SSD now. Overkill? Probably. Does it give me anxiety? Less so.

One thing worth adding — if you want something genuinely simpler, Victron's own Cerbo GX just does it all out the box. No faffing. But where's the fun in that, and it costs actual money.

For anyone nervous about the Pi route, venus-docker on GitHub makes the Grafana setup far less painful than it used to be. Still not easy, just less soul-destroying.

@PeteJames running almost identical on my narrowboat — though I'll admit the Pi felt like overkill when I first set it up. One thing I'd add: give Victron's own VRM portal a proper look before going deep down the Pi rabbit hole. Connects directly to a Cerbo GX or even a cheap Venus OS on a Pi and you get cloud logging, alerts, the lot, without manually stitching together InfluxDB yourself.

That said, if you want local-only logging with no cloud dependency (which I now prefer — no subscription risk, no internet required at anchor), the DIY stack is genuinely worth the effort.

The one thing I'd flag is SD card reliability — had two corruptions before switching to booting off a USB stick instead. Made a big difference.

@PeteJames similar story here but in a shepherd's hut rather than anything nautical. Ran a Pi Zero W for about eight months pulling SmartShunt data, then last winter it corrupted the SD card during a particularly nasty cold snap — classic.

Switched to a Raspberry Pi 4 with a proper read-only filesystem and an industrial-grade SD card. Night and day difference in reliability.

Worth mentioning though — if anyone wants genuinely simpler, Victron's own Cerbo GX paired with VRM portal does 90% of what Grafana offers with zero faff. It's pricier but just works. I kept the Pi running alongside it for a while out of stubbornness, then eventually admitted defeat and let the Cerbo take over logging duties entirely.

Sometimes the off-the-shelf solution is off-the-shelf for good reason.