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I have been able to get the basic Venus Console to display on my IPS display connected via HDMI from the RPi 4B running Venus OS. I built a custom dashboard using node red as part of my ESS Mode 3 implementation, and would love to display the dashboard via a web browser on the Pi's HDMI output. Any pointers on how to get this working, am I stuck with the built in console being the only thing that can display via HDMI out?
After much research it seems unlikely I will get a working web browser on the Venus OS image. The main issue seems to be the lack of any X11/xorg window desktop environment which so many browsers (chromium, firefox etc) rely on. NetSurf does have a framebuffer output mode which looks promising but building all its dependencies on the Venus OS running Pi without apt would be quite a challenge. Installing the Venus stack on a Pi running raspbian might yield more fruitful results but seems to be even less supported and more error prone.
If any tips come to mind I would sure appreciate it =)
I ended up going to raspbian "buster" and installed the Victron "localsettings" and "mk2-dbus "modules on top. Now I have the node-red dashboard displaying all the time in a full screen chromium window on a 10.1" IPS display near the battery bank.
Its a bummer losing the native Venus console for some settings, although since I am running mine as full mode 3 ESS, there isn't a lot of configuration I'm missing. Losing remote veconfigure is another bummer. Having access to the full buster apt repo, the latest versions of nodered and node.js and an X11 environment does make it worth the switch IMO. This thread, especially the post by iuri helped me down the right path to getting the Victron modules installed on raspbian. You can additionally get the nodered victron nodes installed once you have nodered installed.
One important thing I dont see mentioned in any of the guides: localsettings must be running prior to launching mk2-dbus, I run mine in a screen after bootup:
python3 /opt/victronenergy/localsettings/localsettings.py
Then to start mk2-dbus:
/opt/victronenergy/mk2-dbus/mk2-dbus -t mk3 -s /dev/ttyUSB0
