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

I've been running a Raspberry Pi 4 alongside my Victron kit for about six months now and honestly it's transformed how I understand what's going on with my system. I've got a 600W solar array feeding into a SmartSolar MPPT 100/30, with a 200Ah lithium bank, and until recently I was just glancing at the Victron app every now and then and hoping for the best.

The Pi is pulling data from the MPPT and my BMV-712 via VE.Direct cables, running Venus OS Large, and pushing everything into InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards on top. Took a weekend to get working properly but now I can see charge/discharge cycles, state of charge over time, and exactly how many watt-hours I'm pulling from the panels each day. Last week I spotted that my battery wasn't quite hitting 100% SOC for three days running — turned out a tree had grown enough to start shading one string in the afternoon.

What I'm curious about is whether anyone's gone further with this — particularly around alerts. Right now if something goes wrong overnight I won't know until morning. I've had a look at setting up Telegram or email notifications through Grafana alerts but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Anyone done this with Victron kit specifically? Did you find the VRM portal alerts sufficient or did you want something more custom?

Also wondering if anyone's monitoring non-Victron bits of their system — I've got a Fogstar Drift 200Ah battery with its own BMS and I can't seem to get any data out of it at all.

@Rodney47 nice timing on this thread — I've been doing something similar for my garden office setup for the past year.

Running a Pi Zero 2W rather than a full Pi 4, purely because the power draw matters when you're off-grid. Pulls around 0.4W idle vs the Pi 4's 3-4W, which adds up over months.

I'm pulling data via VE.Direct to USB into Venus OS Large, then forwarding metrics to InfluxDB/Grafana. The dashboard on my phone showing overnight battery discharge curves has been a genuine game-changer for catching parasitic loads I'd completely missed.

One thing worth flagging — I've got mine in an insulated enclosure because the Pi does odd things when ambient temps drop in winter. Lost a week of data last January before I worked that out.

What comms interface are you using to talk to your Victron gear?

@Rodney47 solid setup — I've been running a Pi 3B+ in my van conversion for roughly two years now pulling data from a Victron SmartShunt and MPPT 100/30 via the VE.Direct-to-USB cable. The key thing I'd add beyond basic monitoring is logging everything to InfluxDB and visualising through Grafana. Once you've got historical data graphed properly you start spotting patterns you'd never notice otherwise — I caught a parasitic drain of about 400mA that way, turned out to be a faulty 12V socket drawing continuously.

One practical note: the Pi's 5V supply needs to be solid. I use a Victron Orion 12/5A DC-DC specifically for this rather than a cheap USB converter — voltage sag on the supply caused me corrupted SD cards twice before I sorted it.

Great thread @Rodney47 — Pi-based monitoring is genuinely a game changer once you get it dialled in.

One thing I'd add that hasn't been mentioned: I've found setting up Grafana dashboards alongside InfluxDB really worthwhile for visualising historical trends rather than just live data. Being able to look back over weeks and spot patterns — like which cloudy days hit the batteries hardest, or when my inverter is working harder than expected — has helped me make much better decisions about load scheduling.

I'm also running Node-RED for automations, so certain high-draw appliances only kick in when SOC is above a threshold. Took a weekend to set up properly but it's been rock solid since.

What are you using for data storage @Rodney47? And @GoldenTrekker curious whether the van environment has caused any reliability issues with the hardware — temperature swings and vibration and all that.

Running almost identical monitoring stack on the boat — Pi 4 pulling Victron data over VE.Direct into InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards. Three years in, still not bored of watching those charge curves.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: SD card rot will ruin your day eventually. Run your OS from a proper USB SSD (I use a cheap Samsung T7), not the microSD. Lost six months of logged data on the garden office Pi before I learned that lesson the expensive way.

Also worth setting up watchdog timers properly. A Pi that's silently crashed and stopped logging is arguably worse than no monitoring at all — you think you have data, you don't.

@TonyLee curious whether your garden office setup is recording grid import too, or purely the off-grid side? Makes the economic case much clearer when you can see both.

Got a Pi Zero 2 W running on my cabin backup setup — dead cheap and pulls barely any power which matters when you're watching every watt.

One thing nobody's mentioned: I've got mine set up to send a Telegram alert if battery SOC drops below 20% overnight. Saved me a couple of times when the solar wasn't keeping up in winter. Really simple Python script, took about an hour to bodge together.

Also worth saying — if you're pulling VE.Direct data, grab a proper USB-to-VE.Direct cable from Victron rather than a knockoff. Learnt that the hard way, had some really weird data corruption with a cheap one off Amazon.

@SomersetNomad does your boat setup handle the damp okay? Bit worried about condensation in my cabin killing the Pi eventually.

Has anyone had issues with the Pi itself being a reliable enough host for something this critical? I'm mid-build on my van conversion and wondering whether a Pi 4 is overkill vs the Zero 2 W that @WonkyWelder mentioned.

Also — what happens during a brownout or if the leisure battery dips really low overnight? Does the Pi corrupt the SD card on an unexpected shutdown? I've heard this is a problem and I'm not sure whether to run a small UPS hat, use a read-only filesystem, or just switch to an SSD boot drive entirely.

Running Victron kit (MPPT and a Fogstar lithium bank planned), so VE.Direct integration sounds ideal, but I want the monitoring setup to be rock solid before I commit to it.