Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to monitor their Victron system on a boat or shepherd's hut?

I've been running a small solar setup on my shepherd's hut — 400W of Renogy panels, a Victron SmartSolar 100/30, and a pair of Fogstar 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries. The Victron app over Bluetooth is fine day-to-day, but I keep wanting more — historical data, alerts when something looks off, that sort of thing.

I've seen a few people mention using a Raspberry Pi with Venus OS to create a proper DIY Cerbo GX replacement. Has anyone actually done this? I'm reasonably comfortable with Linux basics but I wouldn't call myself a developer. The official Victron VRM portal looks brilliant once you've got data feeding into it — is that achievable without buying the full Cerbo (which feels steep at £200+ just for logging)?

Specifically wondering:

• Which Pi model works best (Zero 2W, Pi 4?)
• Do you need a VE.Direct USB cable for each device, or is there a smarter way?
• Any gotchas running this on a boat where 12V power to the Pi might be a bit noisy?

RetiredNurse43 | 847 posts | ⭐ Trusted Member

@CamperClive lovely little setup you've got there! I'm running something similar on my narrowboat — Victron MPPT with a Raspberry Pi 4 and the Venus OS Large image installed. Honestly it's been brilliant. I used to work long shifts and checking my system remotely while I was away from the boat gave me real peace of mind.

The Venus OS turns your Pi into basically a full GX device, so you get proper VRM portal access, historical data, everything. The Fogstar batteries you've got should communicate nicely over BMS if you configure it properly.

One tip — get a decent quality USB to VE.Direct cable, the cheap ones caused me no end of grief before I sorted it. Happy to walk you through the Venus OS installation if you get stuck, it's not as daunting as it looks! 😊

SteveGreen74 | 312 posts | Regular Member

Great thread @CamperClive! I've got a similar setup on my narrowboat — Victron MPPT 100/50 with a Cerbo GX, but before I splashed out on the Cerbo I ran a Pi 4 with Venus OS for about 18 months and honestly it worked brilliantly. Costs maybe £50-60 all in versus £150+ for the Cerbo.

Worth noting that Victron's Venus OS image for Raspberry Pi is genuinely well-supported — just flash it to the SD card and you're away. You get the full VRM portal integration, real-time graphs, the lot.

Only gotcha I'd flag is that the Pi can be a bit fussy about SD card quality — use a decent SanDisk or Samsung card, not a cheapo one. Had one fail on me after six months and lost my historical data. Lesson learned!

KevLee | 1,203 posts | ⭐ Trusted Member

@CamperClive — done exactly this on my emergency backup shed setup. I've got a Pi 4 running Venus OS Large, which essentially turns it into a proper GX device. Pulls data from the SmartSolar over USB-to-VE.Direct cable, logs everything to InfluxDB, and I've got a Grafana dashboard that shows me battery history going back months.

The bit that genuinely surprised me — you can see patterns you'd never spot just glancing at the Victron app. My batteries were consistently hitting a weird voltage dip around 3am every winter. Turned out a frost sensor was drawing more than I'd accounted for.

The VE.Direct cable is the key purchase — around £15 from Victron dealers. Don't bother with Bluetooth polling from a Pi, it's flaky compared to a wired connection.

Lefty92 | 456 posts | Regular Member

Great timing on this thread @CamperClive! I've got a Pi Zero 2W running Venus OS on my liveaboard — been solid for about 18 months now. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: if you're on a boat or somewhere with dodgy mains, definitely put a small UPS between your Pi and the 12V supply. I lost a microSD card to a voltage spike before I sorted that out, and recovering the Venus config was a right pain.

Also worth looking at the dbus-spy tool once you're up and running — lets you poke around all the real-time data values directly, which is brilliant for understanding what's actually happening in your system rather than just watching the pretty graphs. @KevLee might've gone down that rabbit hole already knowing him! 😄

IanStevens | 67 posts | Regular Member

Really interested in this thread — been thinking about doing something similar in my motorhome. Quick question though: does the Raspberry Pi draw much standby current when the engine's off and you're parked up? That's my main concern with adding anything extra to the leisure battery circuit. I'm already running a Victron BMV-712 so I've got decent monitoring, but the idea of logging historical data and seeing trends properly is tempting.

Also, does anyone know if this setup works reliably with a VE.Direct to USB cable rather than VE.Can? That's what I'd be limited to given my SmartSolar doesn't have a VE.Can port. @KevLee your shed setup — which connection method are you using?

TU_Power | 847 posts | Regular Member

Great thread! I've got a Pi 4 running Venus OS on my narrowboat — it essentially turns the Pi into a proper GX device, so you get the full Victron portal integration without buying a Cerbo GX. Worth knowing that Venus OS Large also supports Node-RED, which lets you set up custom automations — I've got mine sending a text alert if the battery drops below 20% overnight.

One tip for anyone on a boat specifically: keep the Pi in a ventilated enclosure and watch for condensation. Lost one Pi before I sorted the housing properly.

@IanStevens — if you're just getting started, the Venus OS image is well documented on the Victron community forum. The install is fairly straightforward if you're comfortable flashing an SD card. Happy to share my Node-RED flows if that'd help anyone.

RockyMender | 213 posts | Regular Member

Running Venus OS on a Pi 3B+ in my garden office and it's basically turned my Victron SmartSolar into a proper data nerd — Grafana dashboard showing every cloud that dared pass over my panels since 2022. The real trap is not adding a USB GPS dongle so Venus OS can also log your shed's location, which is definitely not a thing I did at 11pm on a Tuesday. @TU_Power narrowboat setup sounds dangerously close to feature creep territory and I respect that enormously.

SunnyNomad | 23 posts | New Member

Watching this thread closely — I've got a Victron SmartSolar 75/15 and a single Fogstar 100Ah as emergency backup at home, and I've been wondering whether a Pi is overkill for something that only kicks in occasionally. Does anyone know if Venus OS still polls the MPPT regularly when the system is essentially idle for weeks at a time? Worried about the Pi itself drawing down the battery during long dormant periods. What sort of parasitic draw are people seeing from their monitoring setups?

48VGal | 412 posts | Regular Member

My garden office setup runs a Pi 4 with Venus OS and I've piped everything into InfluxDB + Grafana — the historical graphs are what sold it for me. Seeing exactly how my Fogstar batteries behaved during that miserable grey week in January was genuinely eye-opening (spoiler: my 600W array barely scraped 180W most days).

@SunnyNomad with a 75/15 you'll still get full MPPT data via the VE.Direct cable — don't let the smaller controller put you off. Even modest systems tell interesting stories once you can actually see the numbers over time.

Shaun1970 | 847 posts | Senior Member

Great thread @CamperClive. One thing nobody's mentioned yet — if you're running Venus OS on a Pi, make sure you're connecting your SmartSolar via USB with a proper VE.Direct cable rather than relying on Bluetooth. It's far more reliable for continuous logging and you won't get the occasional dropout that Bluetooth gives you. I've got mine piped into InfluxDB and Grafana for historical graphs which is brilliant for spotting patterns in your charging over weeks. @SunnyNomad even the 75/15 will work perfectly on a Pi Zero 2W if you're tight on space or budget.