Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log Victron MPPT data via VE.Direct?

Been running a Victron SmartSolar 100/30 on my garden office for about eight months now, feeding into a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4. The built-in Bluetooth app is fine day-to-day, but I want proper historical logging — ideally something I can query and graph myself rather than relying on VRM cloud.

I've got a Pi 4 sitting spare and I've found the vedirect Python library, but I'm a bit uncertain about the USB-to-VE.Direct cable situation. Victron sell their own for around £20, but I've seen third-party ones on Amazon for a fiver — has anyone had reliability issues with the cheaper cables, or are they essentially the same hardware?

Longer term I'd like to pipe the data into InfluxDB and visualise it in Grafana. Has anyone here actually got that stack running with Victron kit, and roughly how long did the initial setup take? Wondering whether I'm underestimating the faff involved before I commit a weekend to it.

PU_Sparks | 847 posts | ⚡ Solar Enthusiast

@RogerKnight Yes, been doing exactly this for about a year now! I've got a Pi Zero 2W connected to my SmartSolar 150/35 via a cheap VE.Direct to USB cable (the Victron genuine one is worth the extra few quid, clones can be flaky).

I'm using the vedirect Python library to pull the data and push it into InfluxDB, then visualise everything in Grafana. Absolute game changer — you can see yield trends, state-of-charge patterns, the lot.

One tip: make sure you set the Pi to read-only filesystem mode, otherwise SD card corruption will bite you eventually, especially with frequent writes. I learnt that the hard way!

Are you planning to log locally or push to something cloud-based? Happy to share my basic Python script if it'd help get you started.

GillGibson | 312 posts | 🔋 Off-Grid Convert

@RogerKnight Great project! One thing worth mentioning that I don't see come up often — make sure you're using a proper USB to VE.Direct cable rather than a generic TTL adapter. I fried a Pi's UART once being cavalier about that. Also, if you're planning to store data long-term, SQLite works brilliantly for this use case but swap your SD card for a USB SSD to avoid the inevitable corruption from constant writes.

I run Grafana on top and the visual dashboards are genuinely useful for spotting patterns — I noticed my office roof gets shading earlier in winter afternoons than I'd realised, which helped me reposition a panel slightly.

What are you hoping to monitor specifically? State of charge trends, peak generation times, something else?