Feature Request: Customizable VRM Energy Flow Diagram for Third-Party Inverters

Really interested in this topic as it's something I've been wrestling with on my boat setup.

Running a Victron MPPT and Cerbo GX alongside a third-party inverter/charger, and the VRM energy flow diagram is honestly a bit of a mess for my installation. It doesn't represent what's actually happening — certain loads don't show up properly, and the inverter just appears as this vague blob rather than something meaningful.

Has anyone managed to get a cleaner representation through the VRM portal when mixing Victron monitoring kit with non-Victron inverters? I'm wondering whether it's worth:

• Setting up a custom MQTT feed to pull in the missing data
• Using something like Node-RED on the Cerbo to fudge the device roles
• Just accepting the limitations and switching to a separate dashboard (Grafana etc.)

The frustration is that Victron's monitoring hardware is genuinely excellent, but the VRM diagram feels like it's only really polished when you're running a 100% Victron stack. Which is fair enough commercially, but on a boat you often end up with whatever inverter fits the space and budget.

Would love to know if Victron have any plans to allow user-defined nodes or device roles in the flow diagram. Even something basic — let us label a device and assign it an icon — would make a huge difference for mixed installations.

Anyone else running a hybrid setup like this? What have you done to get meaningful monitoring without ripping out and replacing working kit?

@VanJulie same issue on my static van — Victron MPPT + Cerbo but a non-Victron inverter and the flow diagram just looks broken/incomplete.

What I ended up doing is using Node-RED on the Cerbo to pull the data and push it to a separate dashboard. Not ideal but at least I can see actual figures.

Victron really do need to open this up properly though. The Cerbo detects something is there via the VE.Can/USB but won't render it cleanly in VRM.

Worth raising on the Victron Community forum directly — they do actually listen when enough people upvote a feature request. Think there's already a thread knocking about for third-party inverter support in the flow diagram.

@VanJulie @Midge52 — this is a genuine pain point and one I've spent considerable time working around on my static caravan setup.

The key issue is that the Cerbo GX relies on Victron's own communication protocols (VE.Bus, VE.Direct, VE.Can) to pull real-time data from inverter/chargers. Third-party units simply don't speak those natively.

What I've done successfully is connect a Carlo Gavazzi EM24 energy meter on the AC side of my non-Victron inverter. The Cerbo then picks it up as an "AC Load" or "Grid" input, which at least gives you some visibility in VRM — not perfect, but meaningful data appears in the flow diagram.

The actual feature request to Victron would be allowing user-defined node labels and manual data-source mapping in VRM. Worth submitting directly via their Community portal — they do actually respond to well-documented requests.

Really familiar with this one — been down the same rabbit hole on my narrowboat. What I found helpful was using a generic AC load input on the Cerbo via a current transformer on the inverter output. It's not perfect and you won't get the nice directional flow arrows, but at least your consumption figures show up somewhere meaningful in VRM rather than just disappearing into the void.

@VanJulie worth checking whether your inverter has any comms output at all — even a basic RS232 or dry contact signal. Sometimes you can bodge something into Node-RED running on a Venus OS device to feed dummy data across.

Victron's community forum has an open feature request for proper third-party inverter integration — worth upvoting if you haven't already. More votes, more chance they actually prioritise it.

@BoatMatt curious what you ended up using as the generic device workaround — I went down a similar path with my garden office setup (Victron MPPT + Cerbo, non-Victron inverter) and eventually bodged it with a SmartShunt on the AC side just to get something showing in VRM.

Honestly the real fix needs to come from Victron — the flow diagram is gorgeous when it all plays ball but the moment you introduce a third-party inverter it just... sulks.

What I'd love to see is a proper drag-and-drop node editor in VRM. Even just letting you assign custom MQTT data streams to diagram elements would sort most of us out. Submitted it as a feature request on the Victron community forum ages ago, got a polite "noted" 😅

Has anyone tried the ModbusTCP route to fake device identity?

@LK_Solar @BoatMatt — for the generic device workaround, a DC energy meter on the AC input side of the third-party inverter feeding data into the Cerbo via VE.Can or USB is probably the cleanest solution. Victron's own Energy Meter (ET340 or similar) works well here.

That said, the VRM diagram still won't label it properly — it'll just show as a generic load or source depending on direction.

Longer term, if the third-party unit supports Modbus, you can sometimes map registers through Venus OS and get proper labelling. Done this on my garden office setup with a non-Victron inverter — takes some patience but the result is much cleaner on the dashboard.

Node-RED on Venus OS large is another route if you want to get creative with custom visualisation without waiting on Victron to officially support it.