I setup a Raspberry Pi computer which connects directly to my Victron charge controller and which runs a copy of something called VenusOS. From what I understand this is the software that runs on one of Victron's own devices, the GX Touch series.
That said, now that this little computer is running in my solar shed and connected to my computer network, I have a nifty way of querying the many things going on in that shed: battery voltage/current/power, solar voltage/current/wattage, charging state and more.
Since the Python language is easy enough to do this querying I've written lots of scripts to get information, monitor information and further, to toggle ON/OFF smartplugs made by TP-Link (TAPO).
An example script that's running right now on my MacBook monitors the wattage produced by the panels every five minutes, printing this to the screen and using the MacOS "say" command to just say all this out loud.
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:large
Dimension:
608 x 261
File Size:
50.91 Kb
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Michael Blankenship
And here's the script called in line 7 that's responsible for returning the wattage.
Michael Blankenship
This is the Terminal screen where it's been running most of the day. The benefit is that I might want to turn on the crockpot later in the morning after the system is producing sufficient power (but not before).
