Victron energy monitoring

[MDC 77]

Hi,

Did someone develop a VD for Victron Energy solar device? Now has his own app but i think was nice to show some info in fibaro interface.

 

Thanks

[Pflug 4]

Hi.

 

I just created some virtual devices to read out my solar system.

Required is a:  "VENUS GX" or ( if I am not wrong) a Color Control GX

This devices act as a Modbus TCP server.

 

So far I have created Virtual devices for:

1. Venus GX

2. Smart MPPT 

3. Quattro

 

I am still fine tuning the devices.

 

I will publish the VD in the form when I think the are ready to go

 

Best regards
Jurgen

 

 

 

[MDC 77]

3 hours ago, Pflug said:

Hi.

 

I just created some virtual devices to read out my solar system.

Required is a:  "VENUS GX" or ( if I am not wrong) a Color Control GX

This devices act as a Modbus TCP server.

 

So far I have created Virtual devices for:

1. Venus GX

2. Smart MPPT 

3. Quattro

 

I am still fine tuning the devices.

 

I will publish the VD in the form when I think the are ready to go

 

Best regards
Jurgen

 

 

 

wow, I just wait !!!!

[pmaster 0]

On 10/2/2019 at 7:22 AM, Pflug said:

Hi.

 

I just created some virtual devices to read out my solar system.

Required is a:  "VENUS GX" or ( if I am not wrong) a Color Control GX

This devices act as a Modbus TCP server.

 

So far I have created Virtual devices for:

1. Venus GX

2. Smart MPPT 

3. Quattro

 

I am still fine tuning the devices.

 

I will publish the VD in the form when I think the are ready to go

 

Best regards
Jurgen

 

 

 

hi, i asking if your finalize integration victron GX to fibaro, i use victron cerbo GX and fibaro HC3

[pflugj 13]

Hi
I had and still have severe problems with the HC3!

The App that I wrote was causing about 20-30 Log entries PER SECOND.
Apparently this was to much for the HC3 and the LOG files got to big and caused crashes and strange behaviors.
I also had problems withe Fibaro RGBW controller!
The where RANDOM switching devices ON,  WITHOUT any association WHATSOEVER - VERY strange and unacceptable

I am with the support guys now for almost 8 month to get a stable running system.
In the meantime I switched from a single HC3 to 3xHc3 (Master & 2 Slaves)

 

Unfortunately I still have SEVERE problems with the Fibaro RGBW Controller(1st generation).
After backups and the following restart, a unpredictable number of the these RGBW controllers,  show up as UN-configured!!
Normally a SOFT-recon should work BUT most of the times the IDs of the device is changing. THIS should NOT happen!!
I spent month of going back and forward!!!

I will start  programing again once all these issues are solved.

 

I also heard from some Fibaro guys, that there is a discussion about the integration of VICTRON Solar.
How far that is?  I do not know.

Best regards from Namibia
Jurgen
 

[Martin555 19]

Do you have some sollution for victron?

[pflugj 13]

Hi.
Actually I have 2 Solutions

 

1st Solution:
A QuickApp that creates a couple of devices in the HC.
Data retrieval is done, via the Vicitron MQTT server.

The advantage is:
Data changes are immediately picked up and available in HC

....BUT there is a problem with that:
Because a MQTT topic is published as soon as a ¨value changes", it creates an reaction on the HC side.

The number of value updates from Victron is quite high, if your are looking at
"Voltages" or "Currents" and ¨Power" for example.
 

This causes quite some load and triggers log entries, for each and every value change!!

I had massive problems and have seen about 20-30 value updates per second
Causing the HC Logfiles to grow very rapidly and causing crashes on the HC

So one must really limit the QuickApp devices to really neded devices.
.. or even better, some devices with low update rates like for example:¨Battery level"

 

My 2nd solution is:
Add "Home Assistent" to your network.
1st I used my OLD HC2 for that, but it finally died and it currently runs on a Pi4.
... but I will soon move to a virtual machine running on a NAS

In "Home Assistant" I just added an MQTT server and some config lines and voila,
all configured topics are immediately available as sensors in HA and can be used anywhere.
(This includes value logging for statistics or to write to InfluxDB etc. and at the end displaying the data via Grafana)

Home Assistant also integrated my VELUX roof windows!!

(JUST 3 lines of text in the configuration!!)

Home Assistant also made it VERY EASY to integrate the WeatherFlow weather-station
As far as I know the latest version of Home Assistant 2023.10.0  has WeatherFlow already integrated!!!
(I use another add-on which also publishes the weather data via MQTT)

 

Basically:
A lot of the heavy load is carried out by "Home Assistant" - THANK YOU "Home Assistant"

 

One can also control all HC3 devices from HA
One can set Global Vars etc. which in turn can be used as triggers on the HC3 side for example
... and there is probably a lot more

Cheers and have fun

[Martin555 19]

Hi,

 

Thanks for 2 Solution..

1. Have you tried the connection via ModBUS TCP?  Select data and value updates based on time, for example, every 10 or 20s. 

2. Could you share with me a solution via MQTT. Some QA?  I can look on it.  I'm only interested some values.  i know creates a devices in my HC. I'm only interested for communication 

3. I have already tried using HA, but I would to have some Qa in Fibaro  for someone who only need it for basic monitoring and do not have any experiences with IT but They have a fibaro HC3. 

Edited October 6, 2023 by Martin555

[pflugj 13]

Jep, I had a VD in HC2 using ModBus TCP.

I had this working as a VD in HC2 but I have never tried this with a QA or a Scene in HC3.
I can send the VD if needed.
To time the execution of a QA one would have to use a HC3 Scene - I guess (

For the ModBus approach, you need the latest excel sheet from Victron:

Please login or register to see this link.

 

I am also only interested in a few values

For example "Solar power¨
or
"Solar Radiation" value which comes from WeatherFlow
But this values can rapidly change with every value received, because of clouds or what ever.
This would trigger FAST reactions ( maybe even oscillations!, switching things ON and OFF very fast)

So I let HA do the math and calculate an average over a given time period, like this:

  - platform: statistics
    name: "Grid Power 1min Average"
    entity_id: sensor.victron_grid_power
    state_characteristic: average_linear
    max_age:
      minutes: 1
    precision: 0

---------------
How easy is that??
Yes, this can also be done in LUA, but not that easy

 

And then have a automation, scene or script in HA,
writing the averaged values I want into a Global variables in HC3 via "Rest Commands"

 

Cheers
 

[SmartHomeEddy 818]

There is a HC3 quickapp way of using the ModBus, see: 

Please login or register to see this link.

 

[Martin555 19]

Hi Ok. Can you share your QA for Victron in HC3 mqtt?  Thanks

[pflugj 13]

Here you go
Most of the ideas come from some brilliant guys here at the Fibaro forum.
Like: SmartHome Eddy, jgab, 10der and many more (just to mention a few)

I have just adjusted or amended what I wanted to see -
- so I do not claim any credits for this QA

After installing you have to adjust the QA variables!
The topic should be OK

 

Cheers and have fun

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[Martin555 19]

Thanks!!

[Martin555 19]

Hi Thanks but I have a problem on start.  Lua or QA. Lua I think is modbus tcp  and QA is mqtt?  And what about global variable which I have to create?

I just asking 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Martin555

[pflugj 13]

Correct Lua is ModBus and QA is MQTT

If you want to store something in a Global vars, then 
There are lines like this in the:
function [deviceName]:updateValue()

"fibaro.setGlobalVariable(AC_ActiveIn_Source , self.AC_ActiveIn_Source )

For those you have to create the "Global Vars" 1st.
This can also be done in Lua and a very nice way way to do so was developed by (I believe) "Bodyart"

like so:

local triggers={ 'Var1', 'Var2', 'Var3', 'Var4' }  -- add all variable names here
for k,v in pairs(triggers)do
    local chk=api.get("/globalVariables/")
    local chk=json.encode(chk)
    if not string.find(chk,"\""..v.."\"")then api.post("/globalVariables/",{name=v,value='0'})end
end

good luck and cheers
 

[Haitham_ab 0]

On 10/7/2023 at 12:40 PM, pflugj said:

Here you go
Most of the ideas come from some brilliant guys here at the Fibaro forum.
Like: SmartHome Eddy, jgab, 10der and many more (just to mention a few)

I have just adjusted or amended what I wanted to see -
- so I do not claim any credits for this QA

After installing you have to adjust the QA variables!
The topic should be OK

 

Cheers and have fun

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Hi There,

i have uploaded Venus.fqa filed into my HC3. upload was successful but i'm getting below error in debugger window:

[18.01.2024] [14:53:00] [DEBUG] [QUICKAPP319]: onInit: Thu Jan 18 14:53:00 2024[18.01.2024] [14:53:00] [ERROR] [QUICKAPP319]: QuickApp crashed[18.01.2024] [14:53:00] [ERROR] [QUICKAPP319]: /usr/share/lua/5.3/json/decode.lua:74: bad argument #1 to 'match' (string expected, got nil)

 

Could it be something wring in your CODE.

 

Thanks a lot for your help