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acs avatar image
acs asked

External/existing Node-Red connectivity to Venus OS

Is it possible, will it be possible to connect an external/existing Node-Red setup to Venus OS instead of using the internal Node-Red that will be available in a future release of Venus OS?

Venus OSNode-RED
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3 Answers
mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ·

Hi @acs; yes its probably possible. You'll have to find out yourself how; or try and hope that someone here on community can help you.

Sorry for not being able to help more; but when using node-red within Venus OS we already give no support; and for this we can give even less support.

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wkirby avatar image
wkirby answered ·

Yes it is possible. I have done this in the past.
Install a MODBUS-TCP node set on your external setup. Something like this: https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-modbustcp

Then enable MODBUS-TCP service on the Venus device and then you will be able to read the registers as defined in the register list.

Get the TCP register list from the whitepapers section: https://www.victronenergy.com/support-and-downloads/whitepapers


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acs avatar image acs commented ·

I am actually more interested to know wether the functionality here https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron will be available on an external Node-Red installation as well. It looks like it is if I understand the following correctly https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron#Installation-and-Usage.

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betz avatar image betz acs commented ·

i was looking for that today. The node red setup needs to be running on the venus device itself, as it is using the dbus messages. So i went looking into how to read dbus remotely. This is what i found: https://serverfault.com/questions/414350/access-d-bus-remotely-using-socat/423290#423290 Untested still.

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betz avatar image betz acs commented ·

woop. after a lot of trial and error i got it working. I got the system dbus of a CCGX locally:

on the CCGX:

$ socat TCP-LISTEN:7272,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CONNECT:/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket

locally:

$ socat TCP:192.168.9.104:7272 ABSTRACT-LISTEN:/tmp/victron_dbus

then monitor that local dbus socket:

$ sudo dbus-monitor --address unix:abstract=/tmp/victron_dbus


Hope it helps someone

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image
Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) answered ·

I have the node-red-contrib-victron nodes installed on an external Node-Red installation. As far as I can tell it's working limited. Limited for me because my installation lacks of physical devices yet (running in demo mode until I set it up on my boat in 2 weeks). But having access to the demo ESS settings and Ess Control node. The other demo devices I can't access.

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acs avatar image acs commented ·

Thank you for sharing. Hopefully I will be able to start testing this weekend with physical devices.

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Rene Mullie avatar image Rene Mullie commented ·

Stefanie, Ive been following the NodeRed threads and was wondering how your setup came out? Want to do some ESS related stuff as well...

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