Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally instead of VRM?

Been doing exactly this for about 18 months now. Running a Pi 4 with Venus OS Large flashed directly onto it — effectively turns the Pi into a Cerbo GX for a fraction of the price. All my MPPT and MultiPlus data feeds straight into it over VE.Direct.

From there I've got InfluxDB and Grafana set up locally, so I get proper historical dashboards without anything leaving the network. VRM is fine but I don't love the idea of my energy data sitting on Victron's servers indefinitely, and the Grafana graphs are honestly prettier anyway.

A few things worth mentioning if anyone's considering it:

• SD card wear is a real concern with constant writes — I moved the InfluxDB data directory to a USB SSD early on and haven't looked back
• Venus OS Large can be a bit fiddly on Pi 4 specifically, worth checking the Victron community forums for the current stable version before flashing
• You lose nothing by also keeping VRM enabled — I still use it occasionally for remote access when I'm away from the cabin

The only downside is it's another device drawing power 24/7. Mine pulls around 3-4W, which is fine on my setup but worth factoring in if you're tight on battery capacity.

Anyone else gone down this route? Curious whether anyone's managed to get Node-RED flows working reliably on top of Venus OS — I've had mixed results automating load switching based on SOC thresholds.

@LizStewart this is something I've been meaning to look into for my motorhome setup. Quick question — does Venus OS Large give you the full MPPT and battery monitoring dashboards you'd get on an actual Cerbo, or are there features missing?

Also wondering about connectivity — I'm currently using a Victron SmartShunt and a couple of solar controllers over Bluetooth/VE.Direct. Does the Pi handle VE.Direct USB adapters reliably, or have you had drop-outs?

The VRM portal works fine for me at the moment but I'd rather have everything stored locally given I'm often parked up somewhere with no signal.

Been running almost the same setup for two years now. One thing worth adding for @Squib — the motorhome use case is actually brilliant for this because you're not relying on mobile data for VRM when you're parked somewhere remote in Wales with no signal (speaking from experience...).

The only thing I'd flag is power draw on the Pi 4 — it's not insignificant if you're watching every watt. A Pi Zero 2 W can run Venus OS and sips far less. Paired with InfluxDB and Grafana locally, you get dashboards that honestly put VRM to shame for customisation.

Main gotcha: keep your SD card quality high or move the OS to USB/SSD. I killed two cheap cards before switching to a Samsung Pro Endurance. Write cycles add up fast with continuous logging.

Great thread! I've been running a similar setup on a Pi 3B+ for about eight months now and it's been rock solid. One thing I'd add for @Squib — if you're on a motorhome and moving about, make sure you've got your timezone handling sorted properly. I had some odd gaps in my historical data early on that turned out to be the Pi getting confused after crossing into different regions. Also worth setting up a small UPS hat on the Pi itself — I use a cheap Geekworm one — so if your leisure batteries dip low overnight you're not risking filesystem corruption on a sudden shutdown. Lost a month of logging data that way before I sorted it! @LizStewart did you end up going down the InfluxDB and Grafana route for visualisation, or sticking with the built-in Venus dashboards?

Great thread. Running Venus OS Large on a Pi 4 across both my shepherd's hut and boat installs — the boat one in particular has been interesting because of the marine environment concerns around SD card longevity.

Worth flagging for anyone setting this up: move your data directories to a USB SSD rather than relying on the SD card alone. On the boat I had an SD card fail after about four months, presumably from constant write cycles logging every 30 seconds. Switched to a cheap Kingston 120GB SSD on a USB3 port and it's been solid since.

Also, if you're integrating with Fogstar or any other BMS over serial, the dbus-serialbattery driver works brilliantly under Venus OS Large — far more reliable than I expected from a community driver.