Feature Request: Scheduled Day/Night Display Timeout for Cerbo GX / GX Touch

Been thinking about this for a while and figured it was worth raising here since a few of us run Cerbo GX setups.

On my cabin install I've got a GX Touch 50 and it's brilliant for at-a-glance monitoring — but the display timeout options feel pretty basic. You can set it to stay on or time out after a fixed period, but there's no way to schedule it intelligently. What I actually want is:

• Always on during daytime hours (say 07:00–22:00) so I can check SOC, solar yield, loads at a glance without touching anything
• Auto-off or dimmed overnight when nobody needs it

Seems like a fairly simple feature request for Victron to implement in VenusOS — the underlying scheduler logic is already there for other functions like ESS charging windows. Can't be a massive lift to extend that to display behaviour.

I know you can bodge it with a relay and some automation if you're running Home Assistant integration, but that feels like overkill for what should be a native option.

Anyone else running a GX Touch on a boat or cabin where this would actually be useful day-to-day? And has anyone raised this properly on the Victron community forum? I've seen it mentioned in passing but never as a proper feature request with any traction.

Worth us collectively upvoting something over there if it already exists — Victron do seem to respond when enough people push for something sensible.

@Davo24 this one's bitten me on the narrowboat too — anchored up at 11pm, pitch black, and suddenly the Cerbo decides to illuminate the entire cabin like Blackpool Illuminations because something triggered a display wake.

Worth knowing: the GX Touch does have a display timeout in the settings (Device → Display & Language), but it's a flat timer, no day/night scheduling. So your ask is genuinely missing functionality.

Workaround I've bodged together: a Modbus TCP command via Node-RED to toggle the display backlight brightness on a time schedule. Bit faffy to set up, but it works a treat. There's a relevant VRM/Cerbo Modbus register for screen brightness.

Proper solution though? Victron need to add a sunrise/sunset-linked schedule natively — they already use that logic in ESS charge scheduling, so the groundwork's there.

@BoxerCamper oh I feel this one! On my narrowboat the GX Touch 50 blasting full brightness at midnight is genuinely awful — especially when you've just got your eyes adjusted to the dark.

Would it be possible to tie the timeout schedule to sunrise/sunset times if you've got GPS coordinates set in the Cerbo? Victron already pulls location data for some features doesn't it? Seems like a natural extension rather than just fixed clock times.

Also wondering — does anyone know if this could potentially be scripted via Venus OS Large in the meantime? I'm not a developer but I've seen people do some clever workarounds. Would love a proper native solution though rather than faff about with custom firmware on a live system.

Great thread @Davo24 — this is something I've wanted for ages on my static caravan setup.

What I'd really like to see is a proper sunrise/sunset-linked schedule rather than just fixed clock times, since obviously the useful daylight hours shift considerably throughout the year. If the Cerbo already knows your GPS location (or you've set it manually), it should theoretically have everything it needs to calculate this automatically.

A secondary brightness level rather than full off would also be handy — dim enough not to disturb sleep but still readable if you need a quick overnight check without fumbling for your phone.

Worth raising this directly on the Victron Community forum if you haven't already @Davo24, as the dev team do genuinely engage with feature requests there. A few upvotes from this community could help push it up the priority list.

Same issue on my cabin setup. The Cerbo's great but the display behaviour at night is just... not thought through really.

What I'd actually want beyond a simple timeout is brightness tied to time of day — so it dims down automatically after say 9pm rather than just blanking entirely. Sometimes you do want a quick glance without waking the whole screen up.

Not sure if this is something Victron could add via a firmware update or whether it needs to be a feature request through their community portal. Think I've seen similar threads over on the Victron Community site but nothing came of it.

@Geoff1991 static caravan must be even worse if there's no one physically there to notice it's been glowing all night for no reason.

Good shout from everyone here. Worth noting that Victron's GX device range does have MQTT and Node-RED integration via Venus OS Large — I've used this on my shepherd's hut build to trigger display dimming based on scheduled time rules, essentially bodging together what should be a native feature. It's not elegant, but it works reliably.

The real question is why Victron haven't implemented a simple day/night schedule natively in the Cerbo firmware. It's hardly exotic functionality — budget Chinese inverters manage it. I'd suggest anyone serious about this raises it directly on the Victron Community forum rather than just here, as that's where their dev team actually monitors feature requests. Enough votes and it does get traction eventually; the scheduled charging improvements came that way.

@Geoff1991 — for static setups particularly, a simple cron-based brightness schedule via Venus OS would tide you over in the meantime.