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

Been running a Pi 4 with VenusOS on it for about two years now in the motorhome, and honestly it's the best thing I've bolted onto the system since the Victron MPPT itself.

Pulls data from the SmartShunt and solar controller via USB, logs everything to InfluxDB, and chucks it all into a Grafana dashboard — so I can obsess over my Fogstar lithium state of charge at 2am like a proper nerd.

A few things worth mentioning if you're going down this route:

• Power draw matters — a Pi 4 isn't exactly miserly, so I swapped to a Pi Zero 2W which sips barely anything
• Use a decent SD card — constant write cycles will murder a cheap one; I run mine off a USB SSD now
• Signal K is worth a look if you want NMEA integration alongside your Victron data (useful if you're on a boat or, in my case, occasionally pretending the motorhome is a narrowboat)

The Venus OS Large image is the proper way to do it — gives you Node-RED built in, which opens up all sorts of automation nonsense like alerts when the battery drops below a set threshold.

Only downside is explaining to your other half why there's a small computer velcro'd next to the 12V fuseboard.

Anyone else running custom automations off the back of their Node-RED setup? I've got mine sending a pushover notification if shore power drops — curious what other people have rigged up.

@MarineGeoff been doing exactly this on the narrowboat for about three years now, but with a slight twist — I'm running the official GX Device emulation via Venus OS Large on a Pi 4 rather than standard Venus OS, which gives you the full Node-RED integration baked in.

The killer feature for liveaboard use is setting up InfluxDB + Grafana locally on the same Pi. All telemetry stays on-boat, no cloud dependency, and you get genuinely useful historical dashboards — battery state-of-charge trends across tidal cycles, inverter load graphs, solar harvest by month.

One pedantic but important note: make sure you're running the Pi off a proper DC-DC converter (I use a Victron Orion 12/5A) rather than a cheap USB charger. Voltage spikes from the alternator killed two Pis before I sorted that.

Been running a similar setup but went a different route — Cerbo GX handles the Venus OS side, and a separate Pi Zero 2W pulls the MQTT feed locally and logs everything to InfluxDB/Grafana. Gives me beautiful dashboards without putting any extra load on the Cerbo itself.

The bit that converted me from sceptic to true believer was watching my Fogstar Drift cells during a cold snap last winter. The granular logging showed exactly how much capacity I was losing below 5°C — proper eye-opening stuff you'd never catch from the Victron app alone.

One word of warning though: power the Pi from a well-regulated source, not straight off the leisure bank. Learned that the hard way when a low-voltage event corrupted the SD card. Now running mine off a small Victron Orion DC-DC with a decent supercapacitor on the output. Solid as a rock since.

Ooh this is really interesting — I've been meaning to sort out proper local logging on the narrowboat for ages but keep putting it off because it feels a bit complicated!

Quick question for anyone who's done this: do you need much Linux knowledge to get it set up, or is it fairly guided? I'm reasonably comfortable with following instructions but I'm not a developer by any stretch.

Also — does VenusOS work okay if you're already using a Victron MPPT and a SmartShunt but without a Cerbo GX? I've basically been relying on the Victron Connect app via Bluetooth which feels a bit clunky honestly, especially when I want historical data over more than a week or so.

Would this replace the need for a Cerbo eventually, or would I still want one down the line?

Really useful thread this — been meaning to ask about exactly this kind of setup for my garden office system.

Currently just relying on the VRM portal for monitoring, which works fine until the broadband drops and suddenly I'm flying blind. Local logging feels like the obvious fix but I've been unsure whether a Pi 4 is overkill versus something like a Pi Zero 2W.

@LiFePO4Nerd does the Zero 2W handle the data processing without struggling? I've got a Victron MultiPlus-II and a SmartSolar MPPT, so not a huge amount of devices but I'd want to capture everything properly.

Also — is anyone pushing this data into Home Assistant? I'm already running HA for the house and it would make sense to pull the garden office stats in there rather than maintaining a separate dashboard.