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Danakil avatar image
Danakil asked

Venus: TCP/modBus request set-up

Hi everyone,

Is there by any chance, a possible way to use the Venus GX as a TCP/modbus master and get these informations on remote ?

Indeed, and ideally, I wish to use the Venus to get information from a another device over TCP/modbus, I got the register table and tested it, all good.

There's 2 choices:

  • I can modify and use the registers already set-up but not used (for example the genset), which means I need to go deep into the program, cross-compile it again, make sure the upgrade doesn't overwrite it, check the upload on the VRM, test it for a while and bother Victron Staff because it doesn't work on the first tries...
  • OR there's a much easier way that I don't know and will save me weeks of work ?


Thanks in advance.


Best regards,


Nicolas M

Venus OSsoftwareTCP IP Networking
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2 Answers
Pat Davitt avatar image
Pat Davitt answered ·

From other posts on this forum and the developers group on Google, it appears that Victron is working on a number of enhancements to the I/O and Communications capabilities of the Venus OS. I agree with you that doing customization's of the Venus OS is not a good idea for production systems, especially if they are used in a Customer install. It would be a maintenance nightmare.

Might be a good idea to wait and see what Victron comes up with.

There is another way, but it is fairly complex and not very practical. Build an Industrial Automation, PLC based add-on system. I built one mainly for Test and Evaluation purposes using Modbus TCP as the communications protocol between the Venus device and the PLC. Design schematic is below.

Pat


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Craig Myatt avatar image Craig Myatt commented ·

I am doing this at the moment, with an IA Mduino...still going through programming, have not yet started accessing Venus registers via Modbus. There is some big advantages, the main one being that the PLC can effectively be programmed to do what I want it to do with sensors, while getting the data from the VenusGX about Multiplus/charger status, as needed. I am also creating an HTML dashboard, with some success...although I also looked at Node-Red.

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Pat Davitt avatar image Pat Davitt Craig Myatt commented ·

Check to see if your PLC is 0 based or 1 based for querying ModBus register addresses. I had to add a 1 to Victron's published registry addresses to get the correct data.

Other than that it's a piece of cake.

Pat

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Danakil avatar image
Danakil answered ·

Hi Pat,

You use your PLC as the master and get your system's information from the CCGX, don't you ? Can you still use the VRM portal ?

That's kinda what I used to do in my precedent job, but we had our own remote management system. But now, I want/have to keep the VRM.


By the way, nice set-up ;)


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Pat Davitt avatar image Pat Davitt commented ·

Yes, as long as your Router/Firewall allows the Venus device to connect to the Internet, VRM will function normally. You won't, however, have any of the PLC information on VRM.

Pat

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Danakil avatar image Danakil Pat Davitt commented ·

Yes but my point is to remote it on VRM

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Pat Davitt avatar image Pat Davitt Danakil commented ·

We are getting beyond my knowledge base now. Even if you modified the Venus OS to read from an external sensor, I don't know if it is possible to program VRM to read the data. Perhaps there are others that can speak more authoritatively on this subject.

Sorry I could not be of more help.

Pat

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Danakil avatar image Danakil Pat Davitt commented ·

No worries Pat, thanks for your help anyway

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ben avatar image ben ♦ Pat Davitt commented ·

I'm 95% certain that you cannot surface custom data on VRM at this time. You're limited to the fields they capture out of the box.

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Related Resources

Victron Venus OS Open Source intro page

Venus OS GitHub (please do not post to this)

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