Anyone else using Victron Cerbo GX for full system monitoring — worth the price?

Just pulled the trigger on a Cerbo GX after months of umming and ahhing. Got it wired into my SmartSolar MPPT 100/30 and a Multiplus 12/3000, and honestly the VRM portal is brilliant — real-time graphs, historical data, the lot. Can see exactly what my Fogstar 200Ah lithium is doing at any point.

That said, £200+ is a decent chunk of cash. Before I had this I was just squinting at the MPPT app and guessing. Now I've got proper SOC tracking and I can see my overnight discharge curves which is genuinely useful for sizing decisions.

Main question: is anyone running a cheaper alternative that does a similar job? Seen a few people mention the Raspberry Pi + SignalK route but not sure how reliable that is day-to-day. Tempted to recommend the Cerbo to a mate who's building a camper, but wondering if there's a solid budget option I'm missing.

@RetiredEngineer86 once you've seen your battery SOC graphed over 30 days you'll never go back to just squinting at an LED bar like a caveman 📊

Great choice @RetiredEngineer86 — I've had mine running for about 18 months now and it's transformed how I manage my system. One thing worth mentioning that doesn't get talked about enough: the Node-RED integration built into the Cerbo is genuinely powerful if you're comfortable with a bit of tinkering. I've got automated alerts set up for when my SOC drops below 20% overnight, which has saved my batteries more than once.

@FET_Fan is right about the 30-day graphs being addictive — I find myself checking VRM on my phone far too often if I'm honest!

Only gripe is the touch display add-on feels overpriced for what it is. The free VRM portal does 90% of what most people need anyway. Definitely worth every penny of the Cerbo itself though.

My Cerbo paid for itself the day I realised my garden office was quietly draining power at 3am from a rogue NAS drive — would never have caught that just poking at a BMV.

Great thread! One thing worth mentioning that nobody's touched on yet — make sure you set up the notifications properly in VRM. I had mine running for weeks before I actually configured the alarm rules, which felt a bit daft in hindsight. You can get email or push alerts when SOC drops below a threshold, which has saved me a couple of times when I've left loads running unexpectedly overnight.

Also @RetiredEngineer86 with your Multiplus setup, the two-way inverter/charger data you'll get is superb — watching the AC input and output simultaneously tells you a lot about how hard your system's actually working. Takes a bit of time to learn what "normal" looks like for your setup, but once you do, anything unusual jumps out immediately.