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

Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) with Venus OS Large for about eight months now logging data from my Multiplus-II and a couple of MPPT controllers out in my garden office setup. Works remarkably well — all the data stays local which was the main draw for me rather than relying on VRM cloud.

Currently pulling metrics into InfluxDB and visualising with Grafana. The dashboards have been genuinely useful for spotting patterns, particularly how much the Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 cells respond to temperature changes overnight.

A few questions for anyone else doing similar:

• Retention policies — how long are you storing high-resolution data before downsampling? I'm keeping 1-second intervals for 7 days then dropping to 5-minute averages, but wondering if that's overkill on the SD card
• SD card reliability — had one fail after about four months. Now running off a USB SSD instead, which seems more sensible long-term. Has anyone tried the Pi 5 for this?
• Alerts — are people using Grafana alerting or something separate like Telegraf + a notification service for things like low SOC warnings?

Also curious whether anyone has integrated home automation alongside it — I've been thinking about automating when the garden office immersion heater kicks in based on excess solar, but not sure whether to do that through Node-RED or just write something simple in Python.

The Victron Modbus TCP documentation is decent enough but some of the register maps took a fair bit of digging to get right. Happy to share what I've mapped out if useful to anyone.

Been doing something similar on the boat for a couple of years now, though I went the VRM-local route rather than Venus OS Large. Running a Pi Zero 2W with the official Victron Venus image, pulls data from the Cerbo GX via MQTT and dumps it all into InfluxDB/Grafana.

The MQTT broker on the Cerbo is the real hidden gem here — once you've got that wired up you can log essentially anything Victron exposes, including the custom SOC calculations if you're doing your own battery management.

One thing worth flagging: SD card wear is a genuine issue over time. Moved my InfluxDB writes to a small USB SSD after killing two cards. Pi 4 makes that easier but even on the Zero you can redirect the data directory.

@SmartSolarMaster what retention period are you keeping your historical data at?

Interesting thread. Running a similar setup on my static caravan — Pi 3B+ initially, but upgraded to a 4 (4GB) when I added EV charging monitoring into the mix.

One thing I'd flag that nobody's mentioned yet: SD card wear is the silent killer with Venus OS logging. I lost two cards in 18 months before switching to a USB SSD boot drive. Genuinely transformed reliability.

Also worth knowing — if you're pulling data via the MQTT broker on Venus OS, you can pipe it straight into InfluxDB and visualise through Grafana. Gives you dashboards that make the built-in VRM interface look quite basic, frankly.

@SmartSolarMaster what interval are you logging at? I found dropping from 1-minute to 5-minute records significantly reduced write cycles without losing anything meaningful for a caravan/static setup.

Got a Pi 3B+ running VictronConnect data logging for my tiny house backup setup — nothing as sophisticated as @SmartSolarMaster's Venus OS build, but it does the job. Main thing I'd flag is SD card wear — went through two cards before switching to a Samsung Endurance Pro. Night and day for longevity.

Also worth looking at InfluxDB + Grafana if you want proper dashboards. My SOC history graphs are genuinely useful for spotting battery degradation trends on my Fogstar cells.

One gripe — Pi availability in the UK was awful for ages. Finally grabbed mine from Pimoroni when stock came back. Keep an eye on their notifications.

Ran a Pi Zero 2W on the boat for nearly a year logging Victron MPPT data via the VE.Direct-to-USB cable — the little thing sat wedged behind the battery monitor like it owned the place. Upgraded to a Pi 4 when I added a Multiplus to the shepherd's hut setup and suddenly needed actual processing headroom.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: SD card death. Killed three cards in eighteen months from constant write cycles before switching to logging on a USB stick with the root filesystem still on SD. Night and day reliability improvement.

Also worth knowing — if you're pulling data from multiple devices simultaneously, the Pi Zero genuinely struggles. @SOCGal might want to bear that in mind if the setup grows. The 3B+ handles it fine though.