Hi all,
I’ve had a Victron Solar installation since 2019. It has grown into 2x5KVa inverters, 2x Victron MPPTs, 6xPylontech 3500s, a headless venus and about 5000w of solar panel. The intention was to reduce my municipal electricity costs for my pending retirement. I had a geyserwise TSE installed with 2 dedicated solar panels, but was not particularly happy with it’s lack of reporting or practical management. My wife veto’ed the installation of the ugly control panel in the bathroom so it’s in the loft along with the solar system. I was planning on trying to write software to provide better management of the geyserwise, but then I came across the really superior geyserwala controller. I bought and installed one then started toying with the idea of adding some automation to use up surplus solar in the afternoons. I looked at various options including node-red but because I’ve got many years of experience in the management and automation of large (datacentre) unix systems I decided to try automating from the command line using a shell script, curl and mosquitto_sub. This is working the way I want it to so now I’m lloking at a similar type of solution to auto charge the batteries based on Eskom se Push loadshedding information. I know there are nod-red and other solutions but I don’t want to make changes to the Venus and I’m not sure it has the capacity to run node-red. I’m currently running my automation from a unix laptop but I’m planning on using a minimum config headless raspberry PI.
Does anyone out there have any experience in this area?
Regards, Simon
Welcome Simon!
I run NodeRED on the Venus/Cerbo, to control when my geyser goes on/off based on Victron parameters.
NodeRED comes with all that is needed for Victron.
Just enable Venus OS Large:
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:large
Thanks TheTerribleTriplet,
Unfortunately I’ve just got a venus which afaik doesn’t support the OS Large. I’m trying to do things with minimal alteration to the venus environment.
Regards, Simon
Venus has that feature, an ito minimal interference, NodeRED by Victron on a Venus, it works. 
It is “built-in” - just enable it.
AND, when the firmware updates, it is done automatically without affecting anything. NodeRED is also updated by Victron developers when needed.
Thanks, I will give it a try.
Regards, Simon
As @TheTerribleTriplet said the Venus OS Large upgrade is literally a matter of flipping that switch. The Node-RED dashboard is also pretty good for building a rudimentary home dashboard.
Some go pretty big with it, quite high tech … rudimentary is for people like me. 
A bit confusing: The TSE is for EV and flat panel solar hot water systems??
Permit me to critisize the honourable OP. @Simon739
Like a dog with a bone he launches forth on this forum with a diatribe where many issues are mentioned and mistakes (or lack of clarity) are made.
He then disappears from the forum and no trace is left and we are left in the air…
I don’t think that is fair @Richard_Mackay.
He asked a valid question and left to try the suggestion? I don’t think there is an obligation on any forum to return ASAP with an update.
I think that on a measured forum like this (unlike MBB) there are quite a number of informed contributors. This is great and is what makes this forum special.
So it’s important to be specific. The OP produced a diatribe on his first post covering many issues and not doing that accurately as well.
If he’s wanting specific information then he needs to stick to the point.
Pot, meet kettle
My suspicion is that many contributors on forums like this are IT people. They think that there’s always some clever code they can write to produce the answer to anything.
My background is in automation so I look for the best solution…
If I come with a problem to this wonderful forum, I am always back to give feedback on the marvelous advice I receive here. It serves to help many others not comfortable enough to ask on an open forum.
There had been quite a couple of months that due to various personal circumstances I could not find the time to frequent this forum, so maybe the OP has some issues in that regard.
And hopefully I give you guys some entertainment value with regards to the “stuff” I get into and ask about. 
Automation, there I thought that also involves some clever coding at one point or another to produce the required automation?
Silly me.
On another note:
Thought Simons question was “asked answered” … lekker “short and sweet”.
What followed now was: What … whaaaat? (confused emoticon)
Wait… you necro an old topic and expect a quick response? Perhaps that’s an IT thing (I’m technically IT myself), but that’s something we’ve come to expect as having low chances of success
