Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to monitor their off-grid setup? Sharing my Node-RED dashboard build

I've been running a small off-grid solar setup at my cabin in Wales for about two years now — 400W of panels, a Victron MPPT 100/30, and a 200Ah lithium bank. For ages I was just glancing at the Cerbo GX display occasionally and hoping for the best, but a few months back I decided to build a proper monitoring dashboard using a Raspberry Pi 4 and Node-RED. Pulled in data over VE.Direct USB and now I've got live voltage, state of charge, watts in/out, and daily yield all on a nice visual dashboard I can check from my phone anywhere.

The bit that's been genuinely useful is setting up alerts — I've got a Telegram bot that pings me if the battery drops below 20% SoC or if the MPPT throws a fault code. Saved me once already when a dodgy connection was causing the panels to underperform without me noticing on-site. Total cost of the Pi and bits was maybe £60, and it's running 24/7 off about 2.5W from the system itself.

Wondering if anyone else has gone down a similar DIY monitoring route? I'm particularly curious whether anyone's integrated a smart shunt (Victron or otherwise) and is logging data to InfluxDB and Grafana — I've seen some impressive setups online but not sure if it's worth the extra complexity for a smaller system like mine. Also keen to hear if anyone's found a decent way to monitor grid-tie or hybrid setups rather than purely off-grid.

My Fogstar 280Ah cells are wired up to a Pi Zero 2W running Node-RED and honestly it's the most satisfying rabbit hole I've ever fallen down — until 2am hits and you're debugging a MQTT broker instead of sleeping. 🐇

Really nice thread, @Rodney3! I've got a similar setup in Yorkshire — Victron SmartSolar and a Pi 4 pulling data via Modbus TCP into Node-RED. The bit that took me ages to crack was getting meaningful state-of-charge history rather than just point-in-time readings. I ended up piping everything into InfluxDB and using Grafana for the longer-term trends — absolutely worth the extra effort if you haven't gone down that route yet.

@ExBrickie94 the Pi Zero 2W is a smart choice for power consumption — I might swap mine out actually.

One thing I'd recommend to anyone starting out: add email or Telegram alerts for when SOC drops below a threshold overnight. Saved me from a nasty surprise during a cloudy week in November when I wasn't at the cabin. Happy to share my flow export if anyone wants a starting point!

Really interested in this thread — I'm in the middle of planning something similar for my cabin setup and EV charging integration is my main headache.

Does anyone know if Node-RED can pull data from both a Victron MPPT and an EV charger simultaneously? I want to be able to throttle charging based on real-time SoC so I'm not hammering the battery bank when solar input drops.

@KateMason82 — are you using Modbus TCP or the VE.Direct USB adapter to talk to your SmartSolar? I've seen conflicting advice about which gives more reliable data on a Pi 4.

Also wondering whether a Pi Zero 2W like @ExBrickie94 is using would be underpowered if you're running multiple data streams at once, or whether the full Pi 4 is worth the extra draw on a constrained system.

Been doing something similar on the narrowboat for about 18 months. Running a Pi 4 with Node-RED pulling data from the Victron via VE.Direct serial adapter — feeds into InfluxDB then Grafana for the historical trends.

One thing worth adding that nobody's mentioned: Grafana alerts sent to my phone via Telegram have been a game-changer. Got thresholds set for low SOC and high battery temp, so if something goes wrong while I'm away from the boat I know immediately.

@GemmaWood for the EV charging side, look into the MQTT integration — I've got mine talking to a basic EVSE controller and it's surprisingly tidy once it's set up. Took a weekend of head-scratching but worth it.

The whole stack cost me next to nothing beyond the Pi hardware itself.

@OffGridJack snap — narrowboat here too. Got a Pi 3B+ running on mine pulling from a Victron Cerbo via MQTT. Node-RED dashboard's been solid for about a year now.

One thing worth adding that nobody's mentioned yet — I set up low voltage alerts that push to my phone via Telegram bot. Saved me once when I'd left a bilge pump running overnight. Woke up to the notification rather than a dead bank.

Also running the same Pi across my garden office setup via a VPN tunnel, so I can see both systems in one dashboard. Bit of faff to configure initially but well worth it.

@GemmaWood for EV charging integration, look into combining it with Home Assistant — Node-RED plays nicely with it and you can do some smart load management.

Nice to see this thread — been meaning to post about my own setup for ages.

Running a Pi Zero 2W on the motorhome, pulling Victron data via VE.Direct straight into Node-RED. Tight on space and power draw so the Zero 2W made sense — barely pulls 1W at idle.

One thing I'd add that hasn't been mentioned: Grafana + InfluxDB on top of Node-RED has been a game changer for spotting longer-term patterns. Noticed my Fogstar battery was consistently losing a bit more capacity on cold nights — wouldn't have spotted that just glancing at gauges.

@Rodney3 if you're on a Cerbo already, the MQTT broker built into it makes life really easy. Just enable it in the settings and Node-RED connects straight away.

Worth the afternoon to set up properly.

Great thread — been running something similar on my shepherd's hut build for about eight months now.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: I've got Node-RED triggering smart charging schedules for the EV based on battery SOC thresholds. So if the Fogstar lithium bank drops below 40%, the Pi automatically pauses the car charge and sends a pushover notification to my phone.

@FellLover the Zero 2W is a brilliant shout for low-draw installs — I was running a Pi 4 initially and it was pulling nearly 4W constantly, which felt wasteful off a small array. Switched down and never looked back.

Really glad this thread is gaining traction — great to see so many different setups represented here.

@FellLover welcome to the forum! Motorhome monitoring is something I don't see discussed enough here.

For anyone just getting started with this, one thing worth knowing: the Victron MQTT topics can feel overwhelming at first, but once you map out the handful of values you actually care about (SOC, battery voltage, PV watts, load), it becomes very manageable. I'd suggest starting with just those four before building anything elaborate. Node-RED's debug panel is your friend for exploring what's being published before you commit to a dashboard layout.

Really enjoying this thread — brilliant to see so many different use cases. I've got a Pi 4 running on my narrowboat setup alongside a Victron system, and one thing I'd add is that it's worth setting up proper alerting rather than just passive monitoring. I use Node-RED to push Telegram notifications when my state of charge drops below a threshold overnight — saved me from a dead bank more than once when I'd forgotten to check before turning in. @QuietMaker curious what the thing nobody's mentioned is — don't leave us hanging!