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

Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) connected to my Cerbo GX via VE.Direct for about eight months now and it's been rock solid. Using Venus OS Large on the Cerbo and pulling everything into InfluxDB on the Pi, then visualising with Grafana. The dashboards you can build are genuinely miles better than the standard VRM portal — I've got SOC, battery voltage, solar yield and load all on one screen with custom alerts if anything goes sideways overnight.

For my shepherd's hut setup this has been brilliant because I can spot patterns — like realising my overnight load was creeping up because I'd left the water pump on a dodgy pressure switch.

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

• Venus OS Large is the key — enables the built-in InfluxDB exporter which makes the whole thing much simpler
• A decent SD card matters (or better yet, boot from USB SSD to avoid card corruption)
• Fogstar cells don't come with any monitoring onboard so having this layer of logging has been invaluable for tracking battery health over time

The only faff was getting Node-RED set up alongside it, but there's a solid write-up on the Victron community forum that walks through most of it.

Anyone else gone down this route? Curious whether others are pushing data to Home Assistant instead — I've seen a few posts about that integration and wondering if it's worth switching or just running both in parallel.

Hey @WattCharlie, nice setup! I've been doing something similar but slightly different approach — running Grafana and InfluxDB directly on the Pi itself rather than a separate machine, with the Pi also acting as the Venus OS device (flashed Venus OS directly onto the Pi 4). Cuts down on hardware and power draw quite nicely.

One thing worth mentioning for anyone considering this route — keep your InfluxDB retention policies sensible. I made the mistake of retaining full resolution data indefinitely on a 32GB card and it filled up faster than expected. Now I downsample anything older than a fortnight using continuous queries, keeps everything manageable.

What are you using for alerting, @WattCharlie? I've got Grafana alerts pushing to my phone via Telegram when SOC drops below 20%, works a treat.

Interesting thread. Quick question for @WattCharlie and @DaiWright — are either of you logging EV charging sessions separately, or does the Cerbo/InfluxDB setup capture that data automatically through a connected MPPT or inverter?

Running a static caravan setup here and I'm considering adding a dedicated EV charging circuit. Trying to work out whether a single Pi instance could handle:

• Solar generation logging
• Battery state tracking
• EV session data (kWh per charge, cost per session, etc.)

Specifically wondering whether VE.Direct gives you enough granularity on current draw to distinguish EV charging from general caravan load, or whether you'd need a separate energy meter (CT clamp on the EV circuit feeding back to the Pi directly)?

Also — does the Pi 4 2GB cope fine with both InfluxDB and Grafana running simultaneously, or does it start struggling under load?

Been doing this for my garden office setup for about a year now. Pi Zero 2W handles it fine if you're tight on budget — doesn't need to be a Pi 4.

One thing worth adding: I run a daily backup script that pushes my InfluxDB snapshots to a USB stick. Lost three months of data once when an SD card died, proper gutting. Now I use a decent Samsung Endurance card too, the standard ones aren't rated for constant writes.

@WattCharlie are you using VE.Direct straight to the Pi or going via the Cerbo? I ditched the direct connection and just pull from the Cerbo over the local network using the MQTT broker — much cleaner wiring in the cabinet.

Fogstar batteries here, Victron MPPT — all shows up nicely in Grafana.

Running almost identical on my garden office setup — Cerbo → Pi 4 → InfluxDB/Grafana stack. One thing worth adding: write a cron job to back up your InfluxDB data to a USB stick weekly. Lost three months of logs once when an SD card died. Lesson learned.

Also worth looking at VictronConnect's MQTT broker if you haven't already — the Cerbo exposes data that way natively, so you don't necessarily need VE.Direct depending on what you're monitoring.

@Rodney the Zero 2W tip is solid for basic logging, though I'd still go Pi 4 if you're running Grafana with heavy dashboards — the Zero can chug a bit rendering them.