Anyone else using a Victron Cerbo GX with a non-Victron inverter — how are you handling monitoring?

I've recently finished a van build with a Cerbo GX at the heart of it — 200Ah of lithium, two 200W panels, and a Victron MPPT 100/30. Works brilliantly for everything in the Victron ecosystem, VRM is genuinely excellent. The problem is my inverter is a Giandel 2000W pure sine unit (budget was getting tight by that point), and obviously it doesn't talk to the Cerbo at all. So VRM has a big blind spot — I can see what's going in and what's sitting in the battery, but I've got no idea what the inverter is actually pushing out at any given time.

I've been looking at adding a Victron SmartShunt on the DC side just before the inverter to at least get a rough load figure, but I'm not sure that's the cleanest solution. I've also seen people mention using a Shelly EM clamp meter on the AC output and somehow piping that data into Home Assistant, then bridging it across to VRM — but that feels like a lot of faff for a van.

Has anyone actually solved this neatly, or is running a non-Victron inverter just always going to mean a gap in your monitoring? Would love to know what others have cobbled together, especially if you've kept it relatively simple.

Hey @GillGibson, sounds like a tidy build! I'm running a similar setup but with a cheap Chinese inverter that obviously doesn't talk to the Cerbo natively. What I've done is wire the inverter's AC output through a Victron AC Current Sensor — feeds into the Cerbo via the VE.Direct port and at least gives you power consumption figures in VRM. Not perfect but better than flying blind.

The other option worth looking at is using a Cerbo's digital inputs to monitor the inverter's on/off state, so you at least know when it's running. Some lads here have also used a Raspberry Pi with Node-RED to scrape data and push it into VRM via MQTT — bit more faff but very flexible. What inverter are you running? Might be able to give more specific advice.

@GillGibson I've got a Cerbo GX paired with a Solis inverter on my tiny house build. For monitoring the non-Victron kit, I'm using a CT clamp on the AC output feeding into a Cerbo's AC current sensor input — gives you watts in/out on VRM without native integration.

Alternatively, if your inverter has a Modbus or RS485 port, there's a decent chance someone's written a driver for it. Worth checking the Victron community forum — the dbus-serialbattery project thread has loads of links to similar hacks.

Worst case, a basic smart plug with energy monitoring (Shelly EM is solid) can feed data separately even if it doesn't integrate into VRM directly.

What inverter are you running? Might be able to point you somewhere more specific.

Had this exact headache in my motorhome build. Ended up going full Victron with a Multiplus 2 just to avoid the integration faff — but before that I was running a Giandel inverter alongside the Cerbo.

What I did was grab a basic CT clamp energy meter and wired it up to a Raspberry Pi running Node-RED, then pushed the data into VRM via the Victron MQTT broker. Bit of a bodge but it worked a treat for seeing actual consumption figures.

Honestly though, if your inverter has any kind of RS485 or Modbus output there are community-built drivers that'll talk to the Cerbo directly. Worth checking the Victron community forum — someone's usually already written something for whatever brand you're running.

Good thread this. I went down a similar rabbit hole last year with my shed setup — Cerbo GX running alongside a Growatt inverter. What worked for me was using a Raspberry Pi running Node-RED to pull data from the Growatt via its USB logger dongle, then pushing it into the Cerbo over MQTT using the dbus-mqtt gateway. Gets it displaying natively in VRM alongside all my Victron kit. Bit of faff to set up initially but rock solid once it's running.

Worth noting the Cerbo's Venus OS Large firmware has built-in support for more third-party devices than people realise — worth checking the Victron compatibility list before going the DIY route @GillGibson. Depending on your inverter model you might be closer to native integration than you think.

@Clive1999 full Victron is obviously the clean solution but not always practical on a budget!