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!

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...