Victron_VE_on_Steroids

Use an ESP to log values from Victron devices and much, much more.

The project now has several options:
a) Plain Victron logger from the VE-direct port.
b) Vendor-agnostic smart shunt based on the INA226 chip and an extra shunt.
c) Extra-voltage measurement that can be used to measure half-battery voltage or double battery voltage*
d) BME386 Temp/Pressure/Humidity monitoring e) Simulation of a solar panel/SCC/Battery using just a 3$ Witty ESP8266 module without any additionla hadware (great for testing before making the plunge).

Please have a look on the extensive User Manual: https://github.com/rin67630/Victron_VE_on_Steroids/blob/main/Documentation/ESP%20Victron.pdf (if you just want a Victron logger, you just need a Wemos D1, a micro bucket converter and a few wires).

Victron_VE_on_Steroids design

Victron_VE_on_Steroids is designed to deliver the full power of SCC / battery logging on a single ESP8366 device ($4). You just don't need any additional hardware, nor computer, nor gateway, nor subscription. You see gorgeous dashboards wordwide on the Internet, can downloads historic data to Excel etc.

But Victron_VE_on_Steroids is designed for more. It is an ecosystem. You use one ESP8266 for one SCC and a battery.
The devices can communicate in the LAN over the UDP protocol and exchange their measurements.
You can e.g. use a second remote ESP moduel with a display to display your values in the living room. Wirelessly, of course.

And finally I project to programm an ESP32 to aggregate several ESP8266 mesurements to one single thinger.io dashboard.

History

The project started with forking https://github.com/datjan/esp8266-victron-mppt-solarchargecontroller. From that I created a variant that does not use SoftwareSerial (a resource hog) and reports on Telnet instead: https://github.com/rin67630/esp8266-victron-mppt-solarchargecontroller-Telnet

Then having the primary measurements, I decides to go further and provide additional information derived from the given data:

• Power values where not provided
• Battery monitoring (internal resistance, SOC)
• long time integrations (battery capacity, Coulomb integration, Hourly statistics etc...)

For these last functions one need a data persistance that survives resets and also the ability to enter some variables. EEPROM is... Bah. Not really useful if you need to swap ESP devices.
For that sake i am using the free basic services of Thinger.io
https://github.com/rin67630/Victron_VE_on_Steroids/blob/main/Documentation/Thinger.io.md

I have used Thinger for a couple of other projects like Drok-Juntek-on Steroids, which is a Home Brew MPPT controler built on commercial buck converters.
https://github.com/rin67630/Drok-Juntek-on-steroids. I could re-use a lot of code from this project on Victron-on Steroids.
The current default Thinger Screen with a one minute pace looks like that:

You can get a one second-pace as well (however only building up when page is active to limit server load)
Finally you can see the MPPT algorithm working! You can also get detailed statistics online:

But everyone is free to design his own dashboard online !
You can get all that from a cheap ESP8266 like a Wemos D1 clone for less than 4$.

Remote screen

Additionally, a remote display running on an ESP32 TTGO T1 (~20$) is an optional part of the ecosystem:

You can switch between the 6 screens using the 2 hardware buttons of the TTGO module, or over the Telnet Menu using your computer. The communication occurs over WiFi, not using the range limited Bluetooth.

Work progress

• Victron Input processing: Working for SmartSolar 75/15, looking for confimations for other modules especially SmartShunts.
• Victron Input Translation: Working
• Shunt INA 226 input processing : Working
• A0 input processing: Easy, but not yet done.
• OLED Display: Working
• Weather Data: Working
• Thinger dashboard: Working
• Serial communication: Working for Telnet, SoftwareSerial and Serial (on receiver only)
• UDP synchronization between Sender-Receiver: Working
• Evaluation of battery internal resistance: apparently Working, plausible results.
• Evaluation of SOC: ideas not yet done.
• Making integration data reset-proof: Working
• Coulomb counting by hours: Working
• Streamlined configuration, Switching options: Working
• Menu over Serial, Telnet, SoftwareSerial: Working
• Reports: Working

My Todo List

• ESP32 Gateway and Domotic processing Transmission working, need to convert the program to handle all data in arrays
• Battery capacity measurement (over full cycle) currently doable with the existing B report
• Other domotic sensors (Temperature, Humidity, Light flash counter, whatever...)
• Other domotic actuators (Relays, Heating valves, Sender for wireless plugs...
• Documentation, documentation, documentation...

Input required !

• Test with other Victron products
• Provide other manufacturer serial processing?
• Provide algorithm to evaluate SOC
• Provide input for Battery capacity measurement (over full cycle)
• Proofread my documentation tell me where it's hard to understand.
• Make the Victron serial processing working without configutation files
• Reasonable improvement suggestions, especially to streamline the code (while keeping readability)

More to come...