VRM Advanced Graphs - Reference Line

Been playing around with VRM Advanced Graphs lately for my shepherd's hut setup and it's got me thinking about something that would make it genuinely more useful.

I'm monitoring my Victron SmartShunt and have a custom graph showing battery voltage over time. What I'd love is the ability to drop a static reference line onto the graph — say, at 12.0V to mark my low voltage threshold, or at 14.4V for absorption. Right now I'm mentally eyeballing where those values sit against the y-axis, which is a bit rubbish if I'm honest.

Has anyone found a workaround for this in VRM? I know you can layer multiple data sources on the same graph, but I can't see an obvious way to plot a constant value as a visual guide.

The use case that really got me thinking was watching my Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 cells during a run of overcast days last winter — I wanted to see at a glance how often voltage was dipping below my "worry" threshold, rather than having to scrutinise the numbers each time.

It feels like something Victron could add without too much effort — even just a user-defined horizontal line per graph. Worth raising on their community forum if enough of us want it?

Curious whether anyone running more complex setups — multiple MPPTs, inverter-chargers, that sort of thing — has found this limitation equally frustrating, or whether there's a feature I've completely missed buried somewhere in the Advanced Graphs options?

PylontechMaster | 847 posts

@TQ_Builds great shout on this one. What I'd love to see is a configurable horizontal reference line you can pin to any value on the Y-axis — so for battery monitoring you could mark your absorption voltage threshold or your low SOC warning point visually right on the graph. Makes spotting when you're drifting below acceptable levels at a glance so much easier rather than squinting at the scale.

Victron's VRM team do occasionally pick up feature requests from the community portal if you haven't already posted it there. Worth cross-posting it at https://community.victronenergy.com — I've seen simpler requests than this get implemented within a few firmware cycles.

What capacity is the setup running on the hut? Curious whether you're seeing much overnight sag this time of year.

Spider | 1,203 posts

@TQ_Builds this rings true with my narrowboat setup. I've got my SmartShunt logging to VRM and the one thing that'd genuinely change how I use those graphs is a static reference line — specifically pegged to my Fogstar Drift's actual usable capacity floor.

Right now I'm eyeballing where 20% SOC sits against a bare grid, which is frankly daft when the software clearly knows that value. Victron are usually good at listening on their community forum — worth cross-posting there if you haven't already.

The skeptic in me wonders whether they'll prioritise it though. It's been a long-standing grumble in the community and the feature request list seems to move at glacier pace. Still, enough votes and it does occasionally shift.

GrumpyBuilder | 412 posts

Already raised this with Victron support about 18 months ago. Got the usual "we'll pass it to the dev team" response. Still waiting.

The lack of a simple reference line is baffling honestly — it's basic stuff. I've got my cabin on a 280Ah LiFePO4 pack (Fogstar Drift cells) and I manually draw lines on screenshots like some kind of caveman just to show my wife why the system is behaving oddly.

What I'd actually want is multiple configurable lines with labels — so you can mark things like low-voltage disconnect threshold, absorption trigger point, that sort of thing. Not just one arbitrary line.

Workaround for now: export the CSV and bung it into a spreadsheet. Annoying extra step but at least you get proper annotations.

CliffGazer | 234 posts

@GrumpyBuilder that tracks — Victron's feature request pipeline feels like a black hole sometimes, no offence to them.

What I'd actually find more useful than a simple horizontal line is the ability to overlay a second dataset as a reference — so you could plot, say, yesterday's consumption curve against today's. On my boat I'm forever trying to work out whether a dodgy day is weather-related or something drawing more current than it should.

The horizontal threshold line is useful for alarms-at-a-glance but for battery health analysis you really want comparative context, not just a static value.

Presumably this is doable in the VRM portal's underlying architecture given it already handles multiple data streams simultaneously — it's more a UI decision than a technical limitation, I'd have thought. Though I could be completely wrong on that, not a developer.

VoltBarry | 847 posts

@GrumpyBuilder 18 months and counting — at this rate Victron's feature request pipeline will outlive my Fogstar cells 😂

Genuinely though, a simple horizontal reference line on VRM graphs would be chef's kiss for keeping an eye on your Peukert threshold — I've got mine set at 50% SOC for the garden office and I'm forever squinting at the Y-axis like a man who's lost his reading glasses.

Someone on the Victron Community forum did knock together a workaround using the custom widget overlays, worth a rummage through there if you haven't already @TQ_Builds — not perfect but scratches the itch until Victron eventually emerges from their feature request black hole.