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

I've been running a small off-grid setup at my place in rural Wales for about 18 months now — 800W of solar (4x 200W panels), a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 100/30, and a 200Ah lithium bank. For ages I just relied on the Victron app and a basic BMV-712 for state of charge, but I kept wanting more — historical data, custom alerts, that sort of thing. So a few weeks ago I finally wired up a Raspberry Pi 4 running Venus OS Large, pulled it onto my local network, and I have to say it's been a bit of a revelation.

I'm logging everything to InfluxDB and displaying it in Grafana, and I can now see things I never noticed before — like my panels barely producing anything useful before about 9:30am because of shading from the treeline to the east. I've already moved one panel based on that data and it's made a measurable difference. I'm also pulling in a basic weather forecast via a Python script and overlaying predicted irradiance against actual yield, which is rough but surprisingly useful for planning.

What I'm less sure about is alerts. Right now I've got a Telegram bot that pings me if SOC drops below 20% overnight, but I'm wondering if there are smarter trigger conditions worth setting up — something that takes into account the next day's forecast rather than just a hard threshold. Has anyone done anything like that, or is there a simpler approach I'm missing? Also curious whether anyone's integrated their heating or hot water load into this kind of setup — feels like the obvious next step but I don't really know where to start.

Hey @Rob1968, great thread! I'm running something very similar here in Yorkshire. One thing I'd strongly recommend adding is a proper UPS or supercapacitor on the Pi's power input — I lost months of logged data when a cloud passed over and my voltage dipped just enough to corrupt the SD card. Switched to logging directly to an SSD over USB and haven't had a problem since.

Also worth looking at InfluxDB + Grafana if you haven't already — the visual dashboards are brilliant for spotting patterns, like which days your battery never quite hits 100% SOC. Really helped me tweak my panel angles last autumn.

What are you using to pull data from the SmartSolar — the VE.Direct cable? Curious whether you've got it talking to Node-RED yet.

Really nice setup @Rob1968, similar scale to what I've got running down in Devon. One thing worth adding to your Pi build — have a look at Node-RED alongside whatever dashboard you're using. I've got it set up to send me a Telegram message if my battery drops below 20% SOC overnight, which has saved me a couple of times when a cloudy week crept up on me. Took about an afternoon to configure once I had the Victron MQTT broker talking to the Pi properly. The Victron community forums have a cracking guide for getting the VRM local API sorted. Curious what you're using for your battery monitoring specifically — are you pulling SOC data direct from the SmartSolar or have you got a separate BMV shunt in the mix? Makes a big difference to accuracy in my experience.

@Rob1968 solid thread. Running a Pi 4 on my garden office setup with Victron MPPT and a Fogstar 100Ah LiFePO4, and the one thing I'd add beyond what's already been mentioned — get your data into InfluxDB + Grafana rather than just logging to CSV. The visualisation is genuinely excellent, and you can set threshold-based alerts so you're getting a Telegram notification if SOC drops below, say, 20% overnight. Took an afternoon to configure but transformed how I actually use the monitoring data rather than just collecting it. The Victron VE.Direct to USB cable does all the heavy lifting for pulling MPPT data directly into the stack without any faff. Running mine headless with a static IP and just SSH in when I need to tweak anything.

Really interested in this thread — I'm looking at doing something similar for my boat and as a backup monitor for the tiny house setup.

Quick question for @Rob1968 or anyone else: how are you powering the Pi itself when the system is under heavy load or the battery is running low? That's my main worry — the monitor going offline precisely when you need it most.

Also, does the Victron VE.Direct to USB cable work reliably over longer cable runs? My MPPT is mounted awkwardly and I'd need a decent length between it and wherever the Pi sits.

Wondering if a dedicated small LiFePO4 just for the Pi would be overkill, or whether that's actually sensible for critical monitoring. Has anyone done that?