Victron integration
Last updated
Last updated
The Edge Controller currently integrates with Victron hardware using the VE.Direct serial protocol.
The Giraffe Edge controller will attempt to connect to a Victron MPPT charge controller if configured in the device definition.
We use the 'text' protocol and record all the metrics from the charger at 5 minute intervals. The output is then visible on the status page:
The Giraffe Edge controller will attempt to connect to a Victron shunt if configured in the device definition.
Some towers are designed to work with just solar and these can be configured to use the smaller Victron MPPTs as a shunt themselves. However, this does not work if there are any other sources of charge (such as mains power).
The Edge Controller can also monitor the state of a small backup battery itself, but this is limited to a maximum 10A charge / discharge current.
The battery status will show up like this on the status page:
You may occasionally see an error like this:
This means that the Edge Controller has not be able to connect to the Victron device (in this case a shunt or 'BMV'.
If you see this error, you can try a reboot but that is unlikely to fix it. Occasionally removing the power from the Victron device for a couple of minutes to 'reset' it can work.
It is also possible that the cable connecting the device to the Edge Controller is faulty.
If you wish to dig into why things are not working, there are a couple of things you can do without contacting Giraffe support.
The first thing worth checking is whether the Edge Controller is identifying the Victron devices correctly. In the screenshot below, you can see that the VictronMPPT (solar charger) has been recoginsed correctly, but there is no sign of the BMV:
Note that there is a device called /dev/ttyUSB0 which is 'unknown'. This means that there is a USB serial adapter plugged in to the Edge Controller (likely a Victron USB -> serial cable), but that we have not been able to identify anything on the serial end by sniffing the traffic.
The next thing to do is have a look at the list of USB devices:
Here we can see that there are two USB -> serial adapters connected. They are easy to identify because they list Victron as the manufacturer.
At this point, you can conclude that the two Victron USB -> serial adapters are connected, but the shunt is not working.
In order to debug this further, you could connect the USB cable to your computer instead of the Edge Controller, and run a serial dump on it. On Linux you could do this with Microcom.
microcom /dev/ttyUSB0 -s 19200
Replace /dev/ttyUSB0 with the name of the serial port on your computer. The baud rate for Victron VE.Direct devices is always 19200.
The output should look similar to this:
If you see garbled nonsense, it's possible the VIctron device is broken or the cable is not working properly.
Below is an example of a Victron device that was broken and was outputting nothing other than it's serial number:
