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

Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) connected to my Cerbo GX via USB for about eight months now on the boat and it's been pretty solid. Using VictronConnect data pulled through Venus OS large with Node-RED and pushing everything into InfluxDB, then visualising in Grafana.

The dashboards have been genuinely useful — caught a dodgy cell in one of my Fogstar Drift 100Ah batteries because the voltage curves looked slightly off compared to the others. Wouldn't have spotted that just glancing at the Victron app.

A few questions for anyone else doing something similar:

• How are you handling power to the Pi? Running mine off a small USB hub from the 12V system but it feels a bit fragile. Considering a dedicated Victron Orion 12/5 to power it properly.
• Data retention — how long are you keeping your InfluxDB records before downsampling? I've got about 10-second polling intervals and the database is growing faster than I expected on a 32GB card.
• Anyone running this entirely without internet? The boat doesn't always have a signal and I want the logging to be fully local with no cloud dependency at all.

Also wondering whether a Pi Zero 2 W would be sufficient for this workload or if the Pi 4 is genuinely needed for running Grafana locally rather than just storing data.

Would be good to hear what setups others have landed on — feels like there's no single "right" way to do this and I'm still iterating on mine.

@EwanCole58 solid setup. I'm doing something similar on my motorhome but went a step further — Pi 5 (4GB) pulling from the Cerbo via MQTT over the local network rather than USB, which keeps things cleaner physically.

Running InfluxDB + Grafana for the visualisation side, with retention policies set to downsample historical data automatically so the SD card doesn't fill up. Moved the database to a small USB SSD though — SD cards and constant write cycles are a terrible combination, learnt that the hard way after two failures.

One thing worth adding to your Node-RED flows: log the battery temperature alongside SOC. Caught my Fogstar Drift cells running warmer than expected during charging, which flagged a Victron MPPT config issue I'd have otherwise missed entirely.

Been doing this for two years on the static. Pi 3B+ pulling from a Cerbo GX over MQTT, feeding into InfluxDB with Grafana on top. Cheap, rock solid, and the dashboards are actually useful rather than pretty.

One thing worth mentioning — run your Pi off a proper UPS hat or a dedicated small LiFePO4 cell, not straight from the main bus. Lost six weeks of data once when a voltage sag corrupted the SD card mid-write. Painful lesson. Now running a 32GB industrial-grade card as well.

@MistyTinker curious what you're doing with the Pi 5 — in my experience the Pi 3 handles this workload without breaking a sweat, so spending more on a 5 for basic logging seems like overkill unless you're doing something heavier on top.

Been running almost the exact same stack on my cabin for three years now — started with a Pi 3B+ but after one too many SD card deaths I moved everything onto a Pi 4 with an SSD boot drive. Night and day for reliability.

One thing nobody's mentioned: if your Pi goes down, your Cerbo GX keeps logging internally anyway, and Venus OS large will let you backfill once the Pi recovers. Saved me once after a particularly brutal Scottish winter knocked out power for two days.

@BordersNomad — what retention period are you running in InfluxDB? I trimmed mine to 90 days after my storage filled up embarrassingly fast logging every 5 seconds.

The motorhome version of this setup is trickier purely because of the vibration killing SD cards faster. SSD is the only answer if you're moving regularly.

@BordersNomad two years on a 3B+ without a meltdown? Respect — mine lasted about 14 months before the SD card gave up the ghost mid-winter in the shepherd's hut like a dramatic soap opera character.

Running a Pi 4 (4GB) now with a read-only root filesystem and logs piped to RAM — SD card corruption basically solved overnight. Worth doing before yours decides to retire too.

Also shoved a DS18B20 temperature probe on my Fogstar Drift battery bank and pulled that into the same InfluxDB instance — Grafana dashboard now shows everything in one place, solar yield, battery temp, the lot.

One tip nobody mentions: set your InfluxDB retention policy early or you'll be staring at 40GB of data wondering where your Pi's storage went. Ask me how I know.

@CamperCarl SD cards in Pis are basically the off-grid equivalent of a cheap PWM controller — works until it spectacularly doesn't, usually at the worst possible moment. Moved mine to a USB boot SSD six months ago on the cabin static and it's been suspiciously well-behaved ever since, which honestly makes me more nervous than when it was randomly falling over.