Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to monitor their off-grid system? Sharing my setup

I've been running a small Raspberry Pi 4 as a monitoring hub for my off-grid setup for about six months now and it's been a bit of a game changer honestly. I've got a 400W solar array feeding into a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 100/30, a 200Ah lithium bank, and a Multiplus 12/3000 inverter/charger. Previously I was just glancing at the Victron app occasionally, but I wanted proper historical logging and some custom alerts.

I'm using the official Victron VE.Direct to USB cables to pull data from both the MPPT and the Multiplus into the Pi, then running a combination of Node-RED and InfluxDB to store everything, with Grafana for the dashboards. The whole setup cost me maybe £60 including the Pi, cables, and a little 32GB SD card. Grafana is genuinely brilliant for spotting patterns — I can see exactly which days my panels were underperforming and cross-reference it with cloud cover data.

The one thing I haven't cracked yet is getting decent alerts when the state of charge drops below, say, 20% overnight. I've set something up in Node-RED that's supposed to ping me on Telegram but it fired three times last Tuesday at 2am for no obvious reason and my partner was not best pleased. Pretty sure it's a logic error on my end but I can't quite track it down.

Has anyone else gone down this route, either with Victron kit or other brands like Renogy or EPever? Particularly curious whether anyone's found a cleaner way to handle the alerting side without the false triggers. Also open to hearing if there's a simpler solution I'm massively overcomplicating this with.

Really nice write-up @RussStevens, looking forward to seeing the rest of your setup details!

I've been doing something similar with a Pi Zero 2W actually - much lower power draw which matters when you're watching every watt. I'm pulling data from my Victron kit via VE.Direct and logging it all to InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards on top. Genuinely satisfying watching the battery state-of-charge graphs over weeks and spotting patterns you'd never notice otherwise.

One thing I'd recommend to anyone starting out - put your Pi on a small UPS or at least wire it directly to your battery with proper overcurrent protection rather than through the inverter. Learned that one the hard way when my inverter cut out and corrupted the SD card. Now running off a good quality industrial card too, makes a real difference for longevity.

Great thread @RussStevens, looking forward to the full details! I've been running a Pi 3B+ on my system for about two years now and honestly wouldn't go back to flying blind. Mine's pulling data from a Victron MPPT via the VE.Direct interface and logging everything to InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards for visualisation. The historical data has been invaluable for spotting patterns - I noticed my battery wasn't hitting full charge on overcast days until I tweaked my absorption settings. One tip I'd give anyone starting out is to add a small UPS hat to keep the Pi powered during brief outages, otherwise you risk SD card corruption if it loses power mid-write. Learnt that the hard way! What are you using for data logging on yours?

Been thinking about doing exactly this with my setup — currently just squinting at the Victron app and hoping for the best 😅

Quick question for @RussStevens or @TerryBurns — what's the power draw like on the Pi itself? Running 24/7 off-grid, even a few watts adds up over a year. Is a Pi Zero W enough to handle the monitoring tasks, or do you genuinely need the full Pi 4?

Also curious whether either of you are pulling data directly from a Victron MPPT via VE.Direct, or going through something like a Cerbo GX as the middleman? I've seen both approaches mentioned but not sure which is more reliable long-term.

Great timing on this thread! I've had a Pi 4 doing similar duty on my system for about eight months now. One thing worth mentioning that nobody's touched on yet — keep an eye on the Pi's own power consumption if you're running it 24/7 off your batteries. Mine draws around 3-4W constantly, which adds up to roughly 70-100Wh per day. Seemed trivial until winter hit and I was cursing every wasted watt!

@SparkyHiker the Victron app is fine but having everything logged locally means you can actually spot patterns over weeks and months rather than just glancing at current figures. Made a massive difference to how I manage my loads.

Looking forward to seeing the full write-up @RussStevens — particularly curious what you're using for the dashboard front-end. Grafana? Node-RED?

Really interested to see where this goes @RussStevens - six months of solid runtime is encouraging. I went down a similar route last year but ended up using a Pi Zero 2 W instead of the full Pi 4, purely to keep the power draw down. Every watt counts when you're running off batteries through a grey British winter!

I'm pulling data from my Victron MPPT via VE.Direct and pushing it into InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards - the historical trending has been brilliant for spotting patterns I'd never have noticed just glancing at an app.

@VivaroSolar curious what you meant about the thing worth noting - your post got cut off!

@SparkyHiker definitely worth making the jump, the Victron integration is surprisingly straightforward once you've got the VE.Direct cable sorted.