Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to monitor their Victron system, or is it overkill?

Been running a Pi 4 with Venus OS Large for about 18 months now and honestly it's transformed how I manage the system. Went from squinting at the Cerbo GX display to having proper dashboards on Grafana showing every bit of data I could want.

The setup isn't actually that fiddly if you follow Victron's own docs. Pi connects to my MultiPlus II via USB, pulls in data from the Pylontech batteries and the MPPT controllers — whole lot ends up in InfluxDB and Grafana does the pretty graphs.

Main wins for me:

• Historical data stored locally, not just whatever VRM keeps
• Custom alerts via Telegram when SOC drops below a threshold overnight
• Totally free beyond the hardware cost

The Pi 4 was about £60 and I had an old USB-to-RS485 cable kicking about. Compare that to a proper Cerbo GX at £200+ and it stacks up well, especially if you're comfortable tinkering.

That said, I'd caveat it — if you just want something that works out the box without faff, a Cerbo is genuinely plug and play. The Pi route needs a bit of patience.

Anyone else gone down this road? Curious whether anyone's added home automation into the mix, I've been eyeing up linking it to Home Assistant for demand-side management but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

@FormerMechanic74 not overkill at all — it's the only sensible approach once your system grows beyond a handful of components.

Ran a Pi 3B+ for two years before upgrading to a Pi 4. The real turning point for me was integrating Node-RED alongside Venus OS Large. Built a flow that pushes alerts to my phone if SOC drops below 20% overnight — crucial for emergency backup scenarios where I might not be watching the dashboard.

The dbus interface Victron exposes is remarkably well-documented once you find the right corners of their GitHub. Pulled in my Fogstar battery temp sensors alongside the MPPT and inverter data — all on one Grafana dashboard running locally.

One practical tip: run the Pi off a dedicated 12V rail with its own fuse, not piggy-backing off your main bus. Lost a Pi to a voltage spike that way. Lesson learned the expensive way.

@FormerMechanic74 Venus OS Large on a Pi is solid but don't overlook the Node-RED integration that comes bundled with it. I've got mine pulling battery state, solar yield, and grid import figures into custom dashboards — also set up automations that throttle the immersion heater when SOC drops below 40%.

One practical point nobody mentions: power the Pi from the Cerbo's USB port rather than a separate supply. Eliminates one more potential failure point.

The real value for me isn't the pretty graphs — it's the historical data. Had a dodgy Fogstar cell showing slightly elevated temperature last winter. Caught it because Node-RED was logging to InfluxDB and I could see the trend clearly over three weeks. Without that data I'd have missed it entirely until something went wrong properly.

Worth doing properly from day one rather than bolting it on later.

Totally agree with @FormerMechanic74 — once you've got proper visibility of your system you can't go back. I've got mine pulling data into Grafana with some nice dashboards showing solar yield vs consumption trends over weeks. Spotted my Fogstar batteries weren't balancing quite right just from noticing a weird pattern in the graphs — would've missed that completely otherwise.

The Pi itself is rock solid, been running 24/7 for over a year with zero issues. Just make sure you're using a decent SD card or ideally boot from a USB SSD — that's the main failure point people hit.

For anyone on the fence, the setup cost is minimal compared to the insight you get. Well worth an afternoon's tinkering. 🙂

Been running Venus OS Large on my narrowboat's Pi 4 for two years with a Fogstar Drift bank, and the bit nobody mentions is setting up SignalK alongside it — suddenly your battery state, tank levels, and engine hours are all talking to each other like old mates at the pub.

@FormerMechanic14 is right about Node-RED, but the real witchcraft starts when you pipe everything into Grafana with an InfluxDB backend — historical charge curves exposed my "perfectly fine" system losing capacity every winter before I'd have noticed otherwise.

Quick wins worth trying:

• Node-RED → email alerts when SOC drops below 20%
• Grafana dashboard on an old tablet as a permanent display
• SignalK for any nautical sensor integration

Overkill is buying a second Pi "just in case" — which I absolutely have not done.

Great thread. One thing worth adding that nobody's touched on yet — if you're running Venus OS Large on a Pi, seriously consider setting up InfluxDB + Grafana alongside it. Venus OS Large ships with a built-in InfluxDB exporter, so you're basically one config file away from pushing all your MQTT data into proper time-series storage.

The payoff is historical trending. My narrowboat's Victron setup with a 400Ah Fogstar Drift bank showed a gradual capacity degradation I'd have completely missed squinting at live readings — only visible when you plot SoC against charge cycles over several months.

@RetiredChef's point about the SD card is spot on in my experience too — I killed two cards before moving the InfluxDB data directory to a USB SSD. Boot from SD, write data to SSD. Night and day for reliability.

Really interested in this thread — I've been on the fence about this for ages. Currently just using the Victron app via Bluetooth on my tiny house setup and it feels like I'm flying blind half the time.

Quick question for anyone who's done it: is the Pi 4 still the recommended route, or is a Pi 5 worth considering now? Also, does Venus OS Large handle the Renogy MPPT I've got alongside my Victron kit, or will that cause headaches?

@RetiredChef — narrowboat is exactly my next project so keen to hear more about your Fogstar Drift setup and whether the monitoring flagged anything useful during winter.

What's the realistic time investment to get this properly configured from scratch if you're reasonably comfortable with Linux?