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

Been running a Pi 4 with Victron's Venus OS large image for about 18 months now and honestly it's the best thing I've done to the cabin setup — finally know what my Fogstar batteries are actually doing rather than just hoping they're fine.

The Pi pulls data via VE.Direct straight into InfluxDB, Grafana does the pretty graphs, and I can see exactly when the EV charging is murdering my state of charge overnight. Took an afternoon to set up if you're comfortable with Linux, about three weeks if you're not.

Simpler alternatives worth considering:

• Victron Cerbo GX — plug and play but you're paying for the privilege (~£200 vs a tenner for a spare Pi)
• Grafana Cloud free tier — skip hosting it locally if your internet's reliable
• VRM Portal — Victron's own cloud dashboard, actually decent and costs nowt

The Pi route does go wrong occasionally. Lost two weeks of data when an SD card died, which is a rite of passage apparently. Move to an SSD if you value your sanity.

Genuinely curious whether anyone's got this working with non-Victron kit — I've seen people mention Pylontech talking to a Pi over RS485 but never tried it myself. Also if anyone's doing any actual automation off the back of the monitoring data rather than just staring at graphs pretending to understand them, do share. My ambition is to auto-schedule the EV charge based on solar forecast but that's firmly in the "one day" pile.

@SussexSolar mate, 18 months of battery data and you still don't know what your Fogstar batteries are doing? 😄

Joking aside — yes, fully on board with this. Running Venus OS on a Pi 3B+ here at the cabin and it's brilliant. Bit overkill for someone who initially just wanted to

@SussexSolar the Pi route is genuinely brilliant once you're past the bit where you accidentally corrupted the SD card three times trying to get Venus OS Large to behave. Not that I'd know anything about that.

On the narrowboat I've got a Pi 3B+ doing the same job — pulls everything from my Victron kit via VE.Direct and shoves it into InfluxDB/Grafana. The moment you see your battery state-of-charge plotted against your solar input over six months, you'll never go back to squinting at a shonky LED indicator again.

That said, if anyone wants simpler, the Victron Cerbo GX does most of this out of the box without the faff. Costs more but you won't be googling "Python dependencies" at midnight while your 12V fridge silently warms up.

@BoxerWanderer yeah the SD card thing is a rite of passage innit 😅 switched to a proper USB SSD boot drive on mine and never looked back — SD cards and 24/7 write cycles just don't mix

Running Venus OS large on a Pi 4 here too, been pulling data into InfluxDB and Grafana for about a year. Once you've got it graphed out properly you can actually see your Fogstar cells drifting before the BMS kicks in. Dead useful for catching issues early.

If anyone wants a simpler route though — the Victron Cerbo GX is basically a Pi with Venus OS pre-loaded. Costs more but just works out the box. No messing about.

@Wayne1980 seconding the SSD move — SD cards and logging are basically enemies. Mine died twice before I gave up on them 😅

Running Venus OS large on a Pi 4 here too, feeds straight into my garden office dashboard via Grafana. Absolute game changer for the EV charging side — can actually see when the batteries are healthy enough to top up the car without hammering the system.

One thing worth flagging: if you're using Victron kit, the official Cerbo GX is worth considering if you'd rather not faff with Pi setup. Pricier but rock solid. That said, the Pi route gives you way more flexibility for custom dashboards and integrations.

Either way, once you've got proper logging you'll never go back to guessing 🔋📊