Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their inverter data locally?

Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) for about 18 months now logging data from my Victron Multiplus II via the VE.Direct USB cable. Absolutely solid setup once you get it dialled in.

I'm using Grafana + InfluxDB on the Pi itself, pulling data through the Victron Venus OS large image. Dashboard looks genuinely impressive and the wife has stopped asking me why there's a blinking box in the garage 😄

A few things worth knowing if you're starting out:

• Use a good quality SD card or boot from SSD — SD cards will corrupt eventually with constant writes. Running mine off a 120GB SSD via USB3 now, no issues since
• InfluxDB 2.x is a bit of a pain to set up compared to 1.8 — if you're not confident with the CLI, stick with 1.8 for now
• Keep the Pi on a small UPS or tap it off your battery bank directly. Mine runs off a Fogstar 12V lithium drop with a DC-DC converter, draws almost nothing

I've also got MQTT feeding data into Home Assistant on the same Pi, which lets me do basic automations — like alerting me if SOC drops below 20% overnight.

Anyone else doing something similar? Curious whether people are bothering with Node-RED in the mix or keeping it simpler. Also wondering if anyone's successfully logged data from a non-Victron inverter — got a mate with a cheap Renogy unit and he's struggling to find decent RS232 docs.

@VoltWill yeah running almost identical but on a Pi Zero 2W to keep power draw down — matters when you're pulling from a small shepherd's hut system. Thing sips about 1.2W vs the Pi 4's ~4W idle.

One thing I'd add — stick a decent UPS hat on it or power it off a Victron SmartShunt's aux output so it doesn't corrupt the SD card when the batteries run low. Killed two cards before I sorted that.

Also switched to an SSD over USB rather than SD card. Night and day for reliability over 18 months+ of constant writes.

What retention period you running on InfluxDB? I trimmed mine down to 90 days and offload older data to a NAS monthly — keeps the Pi snappy.

@PeakVanLifer fair point on the Zero 2W but I bricked two of them faffing about with SD card corruption before finally giving up and bolting a proper Pi 4 to the wall of my static — turns out losing six months of solar data because tmpfs wasn't set up properly is the kind of thing that makes a man reconsider his life choices.

Running mine with a Victron Cerbo GX now doing the heavy lifting so the Pi just slurps the MQTT feed rather than direct VE.Direct — far less faff and my Fogstar batteries get properly logged without me having to pretend I'm a software developer at 11pm on a Tuesday.

Get a proper industrial SD card if you insist on running lean, not the £3 eBay special that came free with your nephew's birthday camera.

@NotAnElectrician80 SD card corruption on a Pi is basically a rite of passage — run yours off a USB SSD instead and it'll outlast your inverter, your van, and probably your marriage.

Worth noting for anyone on Victron kit: the Venus OS Large image on a proper Pi gives you the full GX device experience locally without any Grafana faff — I've got mine in the motorhome pulling data from a Multiplus II and a couple of SmartSolar controllers, all on one dashboard, zero cloud dependency.

If you do want InfluxDB + Grafana though, stick a tmpfs mount on /var/log and /tmp — cuts SD writes massively. This guide covers it well. Pi 4 with a Samsung T7 SSD here, 14 months, not a single hiccup.

@MarineGeoff solid tip on the SSD — did exactly that after my third corrupted card last year. Night and day difference.

Been running a Pi 4 (4GB) with Venus OS on it rather than the full Grafana stack — turns it into basically a fake Cerbo GX for a fraction of the cost. Gets me the VRM portal access which is handy for remote monitoring when the setup is at my parents' place acting as emergency backup.

Power draw is slightly higher than a Zero 2W but I've got a small Fogstar battery bank dedicated to keeping the monitoring side alive even if the main system is doing something weird.

One thing worth flagging — if you're on Venus OS, keep an eye on which Pi hardware revisions are actually supported. Caught me out when I upgraded boards.

@Hamish1975 @MarineGeoff both right on the SSD — running mine off a 120GB Kingston A400 on my narrowboat and it's survived 18 months of 12V power wobbles without a single hiccup, which is more than I can say for my cooking.

Worth adding: if your Pi is pulling data over VE.Direct, chuck a small UPS hat (the Waveshare ones are decent) on it so a brief battery disconnect doesn't corrupt your InfluxDB mid-write — learned that one the expensive way when my Fogstar Drift cells kicked into BMS protection and took my whole logging history with them.

Also, set InfluxDB's [data] cache-snapshot-write-cold-duration to something sensible — defaults will eat your SD/SSD alive with constant writes over time.