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jsmith avatar image
jsmith asked

VE.CAN 11 bit CAN IDs

Victron has a whitepaper on VE.CAN registers or VREGS. It mentions message contents and some PGNs which can be converted to 29 bit CAN IDs. When I plug into the VE.CAN or BMS CAN port on the Cerbo GX I see 11 bit IDs 0x305 and 0x307. Sending the device Some 29 bit IDs does not seem to yield any messages back, not even error messages. I have updated to the latest firmware and still am not receiving any 29bit CAN IDs. On the Cerbo screen I can see the number of received messaged increment when I send messages to the bus. Has anyone else run into this issue?

VE.Can
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2 Answers
Alex Pescaru avatar image
Alex Pescaru answered ·

That document, in the introduction, says something like: "This document defines how proprietary Victron messages can be used to request and alter settings / values over the NMEA 2000 network."

So, I believe that for those messages are in fact NMEA specific CAN IDs, not VE.CAN specific IDs.

I didn't sniffed (yet) the Victron CAN bus, but I have the feeling that are 11 bit IDs.

This is also enforced by the fact that the Pylontech CAN messages are also 11 bit, on the following IDs:

351, 355, 356, 35A, 35E, 35F, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379.

I will be following this topic with interest, because I was thinking to sniff the communication between my Cerbo and Multi RS Solar in order to build a different gateway/controller between my Pylontechs and Multi RS.

Because the Multi RS when it says "External control" for sure is commanded by an external device through CAN (Cerbo in this moment), what I am looking for now are the CAN IDs used for controlling the Multi RS like charge on/off, current limits, inverter on/off, etc.

Don't know if the Victron has a public document for this, I didn't find something like this, I also don't know if Victron is OK with reverse engineering their communication over VE.CAN, hope they won't mind... :-))

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jsmith avatar image jsmith commented ·
I am trying something similar to translate unsupported BMS messages and convert them to something the Cerbo & Multiplus II can use to control current, charging and inverting.
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Alex Pescaru avatar image Alex Pescaru jsmith commented ·

Try the link below....

Cerbo is listening on the CAN IDs I've mentioned above for the information from battery. For sure Multiplus does it too...

Because Pylontechs on these CAN IDs publishes its information.

https://github.com/jmibk/BMS-LIB-CAN-Victron

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jsmith avatar image jsmith Alex Pescaru commented ·

The Cerbo screen shows the battery info now but there is not a clear way to control the charger using their documentation.

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rkapsi avatar image rkapsi commented ·
For completeness search for "sunny island can protocol" (or "sma can protocol") and you should find a PDF with a protocol description of what appears to be the foundation of all of this, and what everybody has been copying, and implementing in some shape or form.
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Alex Pescaru avatar image
Alex Pescaru answered ·

Try this to see how it's done some of the comms...

https://github.com/izak/arduino-victron-canbus

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