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

Been doing this for about 8 months now on the shepherd's hut build and honestly it's been brilliant once I got my head around it 🙂

Running a Pi 4 with VictronConnect data pulled via a Venus OS setup — logs everything to InfluxDB and then Grafana for the pretty graphs. Took me a weekend to get it all talking properly but now I barely touch it.

Few things I've noticed:

• The MPPT data from my Victron SmartSolar 100/30 is dead accurate compared to what the app shows
• Battery SOC tracking on my Fogstar lithium cells has been rock solid
• Had one weird dropout after a power cut wiped the Pi's SD card — now running off a proper USB SSD instead, sorted

Main reason I went local rather than VRM portal is just the privacy thing tbh. Don't love everything sitting on their servers. Also works fine when I've got no signal out in the Dales which is... often 😅

Thinking about adding a temperature sensor feed next, maybe track the hut ambient vs battery compartment temps through winter.

Anyone else gone down this rabbit hole? Curious what OS image people are using — I started with Raspberry Pi OS but seen some mention of dedicated Venus OS builds running directly on the Pi which looks interesting. Not sure I want to rebuild everything again though knowing me I'd end up breaking something and spending another weekend on it!

@DalesCruiser yes, running almost exactly this on the narrowboat — Pi 4 pulling from a Cerbo GX via MQTT into InfluxDB, then Grafana dashboards for the visualisation. Been solid for about 14 months now.

One thing worth adding: if you're logging to an SD card long-term, you will eventually kill it from write cycles. Switched to a Samsung Pro Endurance card (designed for dashcams/CCTV continuous write) and the problem basically disappeared. Alternatively boot from a USB SSD entirely.

Also worth looking at Node-RED if you haven't already — I've got automations triggering based on SOC thresholds that send alerts via Telegram. Useful when you're away from the boat and want to know if something's going wrong with the Victron SmartSolar overnight.

The MQTT broker built into Venus OS makes the whole thing surprisingly straightforward once you find the right topic paths.

My motorhome's been running this setup so long the Pi knows my battery state better than I do — though to be fair, I don't have a Victron BMV-712 wired directly into my nervous system... yet.

Been doing exactly this for the cabin for two years now — couple of things worth adding that nobody's mentioned yet:

SD card wear is the silent killer of these setups. InfluxDB writes are brutal on cheap cards. Either move your data directory to a USB SSD, or at minimum grab a Samsung Endurance Pro card — designed for dashcam continuous writes, survives much longer.

Also worth setting up Grafana alerts to ping you via Telegram when SOC drops below a threshold. Saved me from a dead battery more than once when I'd left an EV charger ticking away overnight like an idiot.

One gotcha with Venus OS MQTT: if your Cerbo GX firmware updates, occasionally the topic structure shifts slightly and your dashboards go mysteriously blank. Pin your firmware version until you're ready to debug — ask me how I know 🙃

Got a slightly different angle on this — been running my Pi Zero 2W rather than a Pi 4 for the battery logging, and the power draw difference matters when you're watching every watt on a small bank.

Pulls MQTT from the Cerbo GX just fine, pushes into InfluxDB, Grafana on top. The Zero barely registers on the system.

One thing I'd flag that nobody's touched on yet: SD card longevity. Write cycles will murder a cheap card within months when InfluxDB is hammering it constantly. Moved mine to a proper industrial-grade card and also tweaked InfluxDB's write interval to buffer locally before committing. Night and day difference — been solid for over a year now with no card failures.

@DailySolar curious what you changed on yours — wondering if we landed on similar fixes.