I know that there is interest in getting the Pi Zero working but nobody has cracked it yet. I was looking at hiring someone to tackle it but then Corona pressed pause on that.
I'm now slowly getting above water again and looking at it.
The use case here is clients who can only afford tiny solutions eg. 1200VA with a single 230Ah battery. This is wired into their house and allows them to run the basics without interruption - very valuable and they are very happy. But adding a Venus adds about 25% to the cost of this sort of solution. It is just too much.
Then, when the customer has issues, we cannot help them because we have no idea what was happening at the time.
A Raspberry Pi-based solution does not come in cheaply enough to justify the schlep compared to just supplying a Venus at cost. Board plus robust power plus SD plus MK3 plus time to build and load makes the Venus at cost a better solution for us.
BUT, if we could do something with a Pi Zero and an alternative to an MK3, we could provide a very simple solution with probably enough power to manage just a single device eg. a MultiPlus.
I understand that Ve.Bus is not Ethernet but just uses the RJ45 connector. If that is the case, could the RJ45 not connect directly to the GPIO of the Pi and we implement the protocol on the Pi?
I may be talking total crap, in which case, set me straight and I will carry on living my life.
But, if I'm onto something here, we could build something very small and simple that could help a lot of installers out there better serve their clients.
