VRM updates

[PeteS]

Do you have an idiot proof "How to", or better still please take my money and post me things that work lol. I currently have the Pi set-up and working well monitoring BMV/Multiplus/MPPT

I don't I just gleaned all the information from the Victron Community forum. I am an Electronics Engineer so it was reasonably straight forward for me. There is a lot of information on the forum including the circuitry of the Cerbo Gx so it was just a case of copying the input circuitry from that.

 

[st3v3]

I don't I just gleaned all the information from the Victron Community forum. I am an Electronics Engineer so it was reasonably straight forward for me. There is a lot of information on the forum including the circuitry of the Cerbo Gx so it was just a case of copying the input circuitry from that.

Cool. So how much and where do I send it?

 

[wildebus]

Must admit, the complexity of adding to the RPi the various features that the Cerbo GX (and Venus GX) have built in, plus the extra cost of the USB cables and MK3 Dongle over the simple VE.Direct cables and RJ45 Cable is what made me switch to the official Victron kit for my long-term installation.

I still have an RPi running Venus OS to play around with as a test bed and that is handy, but don't regret the change.

 

[MarkJ]

Your big chance to get an answer.

Event - Recent VRM improvements - Open Webinar - Victron Professional

victronenergy.us13.list-manage.com

The Victron webinar was a bit underwhelming I thought. Though I liked the new 'dark' design. Was there something for us motorhomers that I missed?

 

[xsilvergs]

The Victron webinar was a bit underwhelming I thought. Though I liked the new 'dark' design. Was there something for us motorhomers that I missed?

I never got to see it, Covid testing for France took up some of my day.

 

[MarkJ]

I never got to see it

Mostly, I think, geared at people with more complicated set-ups: multiple battery banks, dozens of sites to manage and so on.

One little nugget I suppose is that they will shortly support a humidity sensor (from these people https://ruuvi.com/) which is quite neat.

But otherwise I didn't get much from it personally.

 

[wildebus]

Mostly, I think, geared at people with more complicated set-ups: multiple battery banks, dozens of sites to manage and so on.

One little nugget I suppose is that they will shortly support a humidity sensor (from these people https://ruuvi.com/) which is quite neat.

But otherwise I didn't get much from it personally.

I didn't join the seminar, but I thought one of the advantages of something like Node-Red was the ability to have information from different, unconnected systems on a single control interface and so interact with each other via software to bridge that hardware gap. A way to have a common single dashboard for the IoT - Internet of Things? So if I have a Node for my Ablemail B2B, I can bring in that info and monitor in the same window as the Victron or whatever. It is mean to be an open-source thing, but Victron seemed to have tied it (the VRM launchable one) to their own kit?

Point of that being ... take the humidity sensor .... why does it have to be a ruuvi one? should not any one which had an available Node Red node not work? (be nice to get away from vendor approved products only. I liked the sound of the UV sensor Victron 'approved' a couple of years ago until I saw the price!)

 

[MarkJ]

To be fair, they specifically excluded open source stuff from the scope of the webinar

 

[xsilvergs]

Mostly, I think, geared at people with more complicated set-ups: multiple battery banks, dozens of sites to manage and so on.

One little nugget I suppose is that they will shortly support a humidity sensor (from these people https://ruuvi.com/) which is quite neat.

But otherwise I didn't get much from it personally.

I had seen mention of Ruuvi and did have a quick look at the product, I think €40. If you buy one and integrate it into your system I'll be very interested to hear how you get on.

 

[MarkJ]

If you buy one

Have to see what Father Christmas brings me I'll let you know if I get lucky.

We think we spend lots on our vans, but it's nothing compared to boats: one guy was interested in the discounts for 10+ sensors... Another guy said he needed multiple Venus GXs because the boat was too big for all the bluetooth devices (monitoring 5 battery banks, I think he said) to reach just one.

 

[wildebus]

Have to see what Father Christmas brings me I'll let you know if I get lucky.

We think we spend lots on our vans, but it's nothing compared to boats: one guy was interested in the discounts for 10+ sensors... Another guy said he needed multiple Venus GXs because the boat was too big for all the bluetooth devices (monitoring 5 battery banks, I think he said) to reach just one.

tricky as you can only have one Venus OS unit per system. He'll end up with multiple systems which don't communicate with each other (or with Bluetooth either). Confusing.