Moduswechsel EVCS (Automatisch → Manuel) über VRM schlägt fehl

Bit of a niche one this, but wondering if anyone else has run into issues switching EV charging station modes remotely via VRM?

Running a Victron CCGX on Venus OS v3.54 (yes, I know it's end-of-life, haven't pulled the trigger on a Cerbo GX upgrade yet) connected to an EVCS via a USB Wi-Fi dongle — similar RT5370 chipset situation. When I try to flip the charging mode from Automatic → Manual through the VRM portal, the command appears to send fine, portal shows the updated state briefly, then it bounces straight back to Automatic within 30–60 seconds.

Local control through the CCGX menu works without issue, so the EVCS itself isn't faulty. This feels like a comms reliability problem — the dongle dropping packets at just the wrong moment during the state handshake, or perhaps the EOL firmware not handling the VRM write-back properly.

A few things I've already tried:

• Rebooting the CCGX and EVCS together
• Checking signal strength on the dongle (adequate, not brilliant)
• Verifying EVCS firmware is current (v2.05)

My suspicion is the USB Wi-Fi path introduces just enough latency or instability that the mode-change confirmation never fully completes, and Venus OS rolls back to the last confirmed state.

Has anyone resolved this with a wired Ethernet connection to the EVCS instead? Or is this fundamentally an EOL Venus OS bug that a Cerbo + latest firmware would sort?

Would be particularly interested if anyone in a van or cabin install has cracked this — my shepherd's hut setup really needs reliable scheduled charging rather than babysitting it

@BatteryBarry seen this exact issue on my static caravan setup. The CCGX is almost certainly the culprit — Mode switching for the EVCS via VRM relies on dbus service registration that the CCGX handles differently to the Cerbo GX. On v3.54 specifically, there's a known timing issue where the com.victronenergy.evcharger service doesn't re-register cleanly after a remote mode write, so VRM reports failure even if the command partially executed.

Worth checking:

• SSH into the CCGX and run dbus-spy to watch the evcharger object
• Confirm Mode path is actually writeable at device level
• Try issuing the mode change via MQTT instead of VRM UI as a workaround

Victron's community forum has a thread from late 2023 confirming this regression appeared around v3.50. The fix landed in v3.60 IIRC, but CCGX builds lag behind Cerbo releases considerably.

@BatteryBarry worth checking your dbus service registration for the EVCS — on older CCGX hardware the com.victronenergy.evcharger service sometimes doesn't persist the mode write properly when issued remotely through VRM versus local MQTT.

Had something vaguely similar on my narrowboat when I was faffing about with remote grid setpoint adjustments — the command appears to succeed in VRM but the underlying dbus path just bounces back to its previous state almost immediately.

Try issuing the mode change directly via VRM → Advanced → Device List rather than the EVCS tile shortcut, and watch whether the value actually holds in the live data feed. Also — and this might be clutching at straws — is your Venus OS internet connection stable? Intermittent connections can cause the RPC acknowledgement to fail silently.

Longer term, @VitoCamper is probably right that the CCGX is the limiting factor here — a Cerbo GX would sort it.

@BatteryBarry ooh this is a spicy one! Quick question before you go too deep down the rabbit hole — have you actually verified the EVCS is showing up correctly under Device List in VRM, or is it appearing with any yellow warning triangles?

Mine did something similar on my static caravan setup and it turned out the EVCS wasn't being polled properly due to a Modbus TCP timeout rather than anything Venus OS-side. Basically the unit was visible but not properly responsive, so mode commands just silently failed.

Worth running dbus-spy locally and watching what happens to com.victronenergy.evcharger when you attempt the switch remotely — does the value actually change momentarily before snapping back, or does nothing move at all? That'll tell you whether it's a write permission issue or a comms issue. Two very different problems! 🔍

Jumping in here because I'm in a similar situation with my garden office setup — CCGX on an older Venus OS build.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet: have you checked whether the EVCS is actually receiving the mode change command, or whether it's just failing silently on the VRM side? I had a completely unrelated control issue where VRM appeared to send commands but they never made it through because of a MQTT broker timeout that wasn't flagged anywhere obvious.

Worth pulling the Venus OS logs directly via SSH and grepping for any EVCS-related errors around the timestamp when the mode switch fails. Gave me a clearer picture than anything VRM showed me on the dashboard.

@Boycie's dbus point is solid too — those two issues could easily be compounding each other on older CCGX hardware.