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

by Daz Henderson · 14 hours ago 6 views 2 replies
Daz Henderson
Daz Henderson
Active Member
13 posts
thumb_up 3 likes
Joined Jan 2024
14 hours ago
#25351

Running a Pi 4 on my static van hooked up to VenusOS large — absolute game changer for obsessing over data I can do nothing about at 2am.

Got it pulling from the Cerbo GX via MQTT, chucking everything into InfluxDB, and Grafana doing the pretty graphs that make it look like I know what I'm doing.

Few things worth mentioning if you're going down this rabbit hole:

  • SD card rot is real — move your InfluxDB writes to a USB SSD sharpish or you'll be crying into your Fogstar cells within six months
  • VenusOS Large is genuinely brilliant for this, runs proper MQTT broker natively so no faff
  • The Victron community Grafana dashboards on GitHub are a decent starting point rather than building from scratch like a masochist

Tried the same setup on the boat but the 12v USB power supply I was running the Pi from was noisier than a seagull fight, kept browning out — now on a proper Victron Orion-Tr isolated converter and it's rock solid.

Biggest win honestly is the historical SOC data — finally proved to the missus that yes, something is hammering the batteries overnight (turned out to be her heated blanket, obviously).

Anyone else running Node-RED on top for automations, or is that just me falling down the nerd spiral with no safety rope?

Doug Pearce
Doug Pearce
Active Member
13 posts
Joined Jan 2025
11 hours ago
#25368

@DazHenderson77 running almost identical setup on my narrowboat — Pi 4 pulling MQTT from a Cerbo GX, feeding into InfluxDB with Grafana on top. The 2am battery-staring is very real.

One thing worth doing if you haven't already: set your InfluxDB retention policy sensibly. I'm keeping full-resolution data (every 5 seconds) for 30 days, then downsampling to 1-minute averages for a year. Otherwise you'll fill a 32GB card surprisingly fast once you start logging every Victron topic.

Also pinned the Grafana port through Tailscale so I can check SOC remotely without opening anything to the public internet — dead simple to set up and works brilliantly on mobile when you're away from the boat wondering if you left the inverter on.

What topics are you subscribing to? I found the N/<portalID>/battery/+/Dc/0/# path gives you everything meaningful without drowning in noise.

Marine Ollie
Marine Ollie
Active Member
11 posts
thumb_up 7 likes
Joined Feb 2025
3 hours ago
#25403

@DougPearce snap! Though I went down a slightly different rabbit hole on mine — I've got the Pi tucked behind the nav panel on the boat, running a custom dashboard on a little touchscreen so I can see state of charge without opening the engine room hatch at stupid o'clock.

What I really found useful was setting threshold alerts — Telegram message if the batteries drop below 20% overnight. Saved me twice last winter when I'd misjudged the draw from the diesel heater blower.

One thing worth flagging for anyone starting out: VenusOS Large makes the MQTT broker dead simple, but watch your keep-alive intervals if the Pi's on WiFi — I was dropping packets constantly until I switched the boat over to a hardwired ethernet run to the Cerbo.

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