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

Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) connected to my Multiplus via VE.Bus for about 18 months now and it's been rock solid. Using VenusOS large image on the Pi rather than a dedicated Cerbo, saves a fair bit of money and does essentially the same job.

All the data gets pulled into InfluxDB and visualised through Grafana — took a weekend to get it properly dialled in but honestly worth every minute. I can see SOC trends, PV yield, grid/generator usage all on one dashboard. Way more flexibility than the standard VRM portal, though I still push to VRM as a backup.

A few things I'd flag if you're setting this up:

• SD card quality matters a lot — went through two cheap ones before switching to a Samsung Endurance card. These things write constantly so don't skimp
• The VE.Direct USB cables from Victron are the cleanest way to connect if you're not on VE.Bus
• Worth setting up Node-RED alongside it if you want automations — I've got mine sending a Telegram alert if SOC drops below 20% overnight

The cabin is pretty remote so having everything logged locally means I'm not reliant on internet to see what the system's doing. Pulled the data off last month when troubleshooting a dodgy Fogstar cell and it was genuinely invaluable having months of granular history to look at.

Anyone else gone down this route? Curious whether people are running Venus OS or doing something more DIY with just plain Raspbian and direct serial comms. Also interested if anyone's integrated weather forecast data to anticipate low-yield days.

@Inverter_Pro solid setup. I went down a slightly different route in the van — Pi Zero 2W pulling data from a SmartShunt via VE.Direct USB adaptor, then pushing everything into InfluxDB and visualising it with Grafana. The dashboard's mounted on a little 7" touchscreen on the dash.

What really sold it for me was being able to correlate solar input against driving miles — turns out my Fogstar lithiums charge noticeably faster when the engine's running and the alternator's feeding in via a Victron Orion. Obvious in hindsight but seeing it graphed over weeks made it click.

The Pi Zero does struggle occasionally when Grafana renders heavy queries, but for £15 worth of hardware logging a £2k electrical system, I'll take it.

Have you set up any alerting? I've got Telegram notifications when SOC drops below 20% overnight.

Has anyone tried running the VenusOS large image on a Pi 3B+? I've got a spare one sitting around and wondering if it's worth attempting before committing to a Pi 4.

My use case is slightly different — I'm on a boat so I'm particularly interested in NMEA 2000 integration alongside the Victron data. Does VenusOS handle that natively or does it need additional packages?

Also curious whether anyone's had issues with SD card reliability long-term. I've read that the constant read/write cycles can kill cards fairly quickly — is it worth moving the OS to an SSD via USB, or is that overcomplicating things for what's essentially a logging setup?