question

dgnoise avatar image
dgnoise asked

VenusOS, Modbus and compatible devices (Heatpump Ecodesign ED 180RF)

Hello everyone,

I am an enthusiastic VenusOS user managing 2x systems based on it. Currently the systems are fairly straightforward with solar panels, Lifepo4 batteries, MPPTs, and inverters.

Now I find myself in the need to add a heat pump (Ecodesign ED 180 RF) for hot water production and I was wondering about compatibility/interfaceability.

The manufacturer tells me it has Modbus interface and that it is compatible with all systems supporting this bus. In this case, the interface would allow to readout values and set thresholds.

My question is whether anyone knows if this is supported by VenusOS (via RS485-USB converter). Or actually whether in general hot water generating systems are supported and can be monitored within VenusOS. Off course, if this would be even accessible within Node-RED this would be the cherry on top ;-)

Thank you in advance for your inputs!

-DGN


Venus OSModbus TCPrs485
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2 Answers
wkirby avatar image
wkirby answered ·

The VenusOS provides information over ModbusTCP. There are many read only registers and some writable registers available to use. ModbusRTU is not supported.
The VenusOS does not read registers from other systems like a heatpump for example. It is not intended to be a general home systems hub. Similarly, it's unlikely that the heatpump's Modbus service reads other systems either.

The idea is that a dasboarding or automation system can read the registers of the various devices, perform actions and display selected data on a dashboard or a suite of dashboards.
Homeassistant is one such system that is pretty popular. It could read the available ModbusTCP registers from VenusOS, display the data or perform an action and then write to certain writable registers in VenusOS or other Modbus devices.
For example, Homeassistant could read the battery SOC from VenusOS and if it is within certain limits then it could write to the heatpump and instruct it to make hot water at a certain power level.

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Juha Tuomala avatar image Juha Tuomala commented ·
I recommend the Home assistant too. It gets better and better when you learn it more. Given that the whole home automation concept is more or less new for everyone, learning curve is a bit steep but looks like they try to ease that in every release. Learning it is well spent time in my opinion.
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dgnoise avatar image
dgnoise answered ·

Thank you so much for the time dedicated to answer me and I'm sorry for my belated reply.

Your answers are crystal clear to me and I am willing to start familiarizing with homeassistant, even if I was hoping to find with Node-RED a shortcut...

With this said, are VenusOS and homeassistant meant to be interfaced natively, maybe with available libraries or something?

I see several tutorials on the web, but has anyone a tip about the most efficient way to get up to speed? For now I just installed it on both a Raspberry Pi and a Synology NAS via docker.

Thanks again for your precious support!

- DGN

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Related Resources

Victron Venus OS Open Source intro page

Venus OS GitHub (please do not post to this)

Additional resources still need to be added for this topic

Modbus TCP Basics